At my facility, no.
I know there is a lot of automation coming at some point in time, but at my facility (and within the 11 hospitals, 20 clinics and numerous other facilities in the hospital system) I know of none at this time.
I could see how the automated pharmacy could help a lot in staff reduction as well as reduced dispensing errors in most of the hospital, but in the ER, not so much. When I need meds, I need them now, and don't have time to wait for a robot to bring them to me. We do have Pyxis machines (an electronic medication dispensing machine, but still needs to be stocked by humans)in the ER and the rest of the hospital). When I need a med, I just go to the Pyxis and pull what is needed. About 90% of the meds we need are in the ER Pyxis itself, just a few we have to request.
On the floors, most staff have minimal if any interaction with a pharmacist (but one or two are always in the building 24/7 and just a phone call away if needed) and only occasional interaction with a pharmacy tech.
What I find interesting is the video in the first post the guy states they did this partially because a nurse overdosed a patient.
That is not really an error of the pharmacy or dispensing, it is an administration (of the medication) issue, and not something that would necessarily be fixed by going with the automation process (unless they delivered exact amounts of every single drug).
This happens for several reasons (the end user having to adjust the dosage given to the patient vs the dose available). Say you are supposed to received 25mg of a specific medication in a tablet. Well, the pharmacy only stocks 50 mg tablets, because it saves them money if they buy bulk 50mg tablets, so before they are given the medication, the tablet needs to be split in half.
There are safeguards nurses are taught to prevent these errors, either the primary way taught in nursing school which is the 5 rights:
- Right patient
- Right medication (includes checking expiration date)
- Right dose
- Right route
- Right time
Some places will even add 1 or 2 more:
- Right reason
- Right documentation
Plus you have 3 med checks
- when getting the med
- when preparing the med
- just prior to giving the med
and most facilities today have something built into the Emergency Medical Record (EMR) to allow scanning of the med, which will do the 5 (or 7) rights for you.
Obviously errors can still happen if you fail to do the correct checks and verifications, and even machines are not perfect. I don't care how I get my meds, I will still check them before I give them.
