The Hospital’s 24-hour pharmacy services, provided by about 250 staff, dispense around 9,000 prescriptions on weekdays through 27 outlets for outpatients, inpatients and patients at outreach centres.
Separating express counters and speciality pharmacies from regular counters has improved efficiency and reduced waiting time to around 8 minutes at express counters and 15 minutes at more crowded, larger services.
A small manufacturing unit, a quality control lab and drug information services add further value. A drug information centre responds to about 50 drug-related queries daily and publishes a monthly pharmacy bulletin with snippets on new drugs, quality issues, the history of medicines, drug errors, etc. A pharmacy counselling service in the outpatient areas provides additional information to patients.
The Clinical Pharmacology unit provides vital support to clinical departments in therapeutic drug levels and adverse drug reaction monitoring. Therapeutic monitoring of anti-tuberculosis drugs has strengthened tuberculosis management. Pharmacogenomics for individualised drug dosing and patient care is on the cards.
Today, 25 September, 2021 – World Pharmacists Day, we remember Gnanambal, CMC’s first compounder, and acknowledge the contributions of pharmacists the world over. At a time when pills, powders and mixtures had to be measured and compounded, Gnanambal’s training as a compounder was a boon for Dr. Ida Scudder.
Many years later when the medical school opened in 1918, it was pharmacist Jeanette Petrie who taught Materia Medica and Chemistry to CMC’s first medical students.
