Setting up a Medication Guide Protocol at a newly opened pharmacy - Need help

[aboveliquidice]

Ladies and Gents,

My current rotation is at a community mental health pharmacy. They are a newly formed subsidiary of a Long Term Care pharmacy, just now branching out into other fields.

The growing pains of becoming a retail / mental health focused pharmacy are a plenty... case in point - Med guides.

Currently, the pharmacy doesn't hand out any - I am rectifying this right now.

I am having difficulty locating useful medication guides to set everything up. The med guides located on the Drugs @ FDA are centered towards brand name drugs and have lousy formatting.

Do any of you know a decent resource for finding noncopyrighted med guides. Also, a list of meds requiring med guides would be nice. I am wondering if I have to generate my own generic med guide for the groups of meds that have similar med guides (anti-depressants, sleep aids, etc).

Any and all help would be appreciated.

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[pharmaz88]

If you have access to Pharmacist's Letter, the website has a good list and pdf's in the RPh Resources section. ....if you don't have it, I'd recommend splurging and getting access. The price is dirt-cheap for students, and the various resources and guides they have are invaluable.

...why do the med-guides have to be non-copywrited for your purposes? ...making your own med guides could pose a huge liability issue.

 

[johnep34]

Have a google on Patient Information Leaflets. One or two sites devoted to them.
johnep

 

[Pharmavixen]

I worked for 4 years at a pharmacy next to a methadone clinic so we mainly handed out methadone, and there was a significant psychiatric component as well. I'd say be judicious about handing out leaflets to psychiatric pts. But if you've got someone who is in and out of jail, say, who goes psychotic and violent off their meds and you hand them a leaflet that has the whole laundry list of every rare side effect of olanzapine, without the context of how common the side effects are, or the risk versus benefit analysis, you may be providing excuses for non-compliance.

Consult with people who have experience in psychiatric pharmacy before you do this.