Evaluation of the Application of Automatic Unit-dose Drug Dispensing Machine in the Inpatient Dispensary of Our Hospital

OBJECTIVE:To compare advantage and disadvantage of automatic unit-dose drug dispensing machine and manual drug dispensing in the inpatient dispensary.METHODS:Some aspects were compared,including work flow,the number of dispensing pharmacist,servicing endemic area and beds,the time of drug preparation,dispensing and checkup,dispensing quantity,dispensing velocity,dispensing accuracy rate,daily cost of material consumption,manpower cost,fixed cost of maintenance and medication security by means of retrospective method.RESULTS CONCLUSIONS:Compared with manual drug dispensing,automatic unit-dose drug dispensing machine reduces the number of dispensing pharmacist,the time of drug preparation,dispensing and checkup,daily cost of material consumption,manpower cost;it improves servicing endemic area,beds number,dispensing quantity,dispensing velocity,dispensing accuracy rate and medication security.Although automatic unit-dose drug dispensing machine increases fixed cost of maintenance,it promotes pharmaceutical care provided by pharmacists.It is worthy to be applied and popularized.