Postcription: Does Your Pharmacy Practice Follow the Pharmacist Code of Ethics?
Author(s): McElhiney Linda F
Issue: Jul/Aug 2003 - After the Women's Health Initiative Trial
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Page(s): 320
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Abstract: The author, who has worked as the compounding pharmacist for three major Indianapolis hospitals, discusses a problem she has encountered with a “disturbing trend in the compounding pharmacy community:” noncompete contracts that prohibit the sharing of any compounding information to nonmember pharmacists. This causes problems when patients come into the hospital who have been taking compounded preparations, resulting in delay of patient care. This has occurred even though the hospital is not in direct competition with the pharmacies in question. She asks whether it is ethical for pharmacies and pharmacists to withhold compounding information from hospitals or patients’ new local pharmacies and suggests that this is in conflict with the American Pharmaceutical Association’s Pharmacist Code of Ethics. Stressing that the patient should be the pharmacist’s top priority, she concludes by saying that compounding pharmacists should network and assist each other to provide quality care and continuity of care and that compounding pharmacists should evaluate their practice in terms of the Pharmacist Code of Ethics.