Services Provided
The Department of Pharmacy provides pharmaceutical services 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week. With a strong commitment to medication safety and
performance improvement, a focus on customer service, and a role in educating
future health-care professionals, the Department of Pharmacy at RWJ Somerset
is devoted to delivering operational and clinical excellence, while advancing
care and maintaining financial and operational growth.
Our pharmacists are actively involved in therapeutic management. Our policies,
guidelines, programs and services ensure that patients receive evidence
based appropriate pharmaceutical care as measured against accepted standards.
Individuals from the Department of Pharmacy are involved in numerous research
activities. RWJ Somerset is one of two New Jersey hospitals selected to
participate in the Marquis 2 research study, a national multi-center medication
reconciliation quality improvement study whose goal is to implement medication
reconciliation interventions that improve patient safety during care transitions.
Pharmacy based individual patient counseling focusing on anticoagulant
medications, congestive heart failure medications, and geriatric discharge
medications is provided to inpatients.
Pharmacy has a strong presence on many committees hospital-wide such as
Infection Control, Antimicrobial Stewardship, Pharmacy and Therapeutics,
Critical Care, Cardiac Care, Code Blue, IRB, and Medication Management.
Clinical Services
Clinical services are provided in various areas including, but not limited
to internal medicine, critical care, emergency medicine and other specialty
areas (e.g. geriatrics, infectious diseases, oncology and investigational drugs).
Several clinical programs and protocols have been developed at RWJ Somerset
by the Department of Pharmacy, which include but are not limited to drug
dosing protocols, standard desensitization protocols, the Antimicrobial
Stewardship Program (i.e., pharmacy run vancomycin pharmacokinetic service,
antimicrobial rounds), and clinical monitoring programs (i.e., anticoagulation
monitoring program). The clinical pharmacy program is supported by three
Rutgers Faculty, who are residency trained and dual board certified. They
provide a significant contribution and serve as resources to family medicine,
critical care, and the emergency department.
Technology
Medication is dispensed via a point of care decentralized distribution
model supported by automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) on patient care
units which provide nurses ready access to medications.
Hospital and pharmacy department information systems provide up-to- date
patient information and on-line drug information resources. The majority
of medication orders are received via Computer Provider Order Entry (CPOE),
entered by Pharmacy onto an Electronic Medication Record e-MAR and subsequently
administered utilizing bedside bar-coding at the point-of- care. The use
of this state-of- the-art technology enhances medication safety. Pharmacists
document clinical interventions in the electronic medical record.