Workforce planning and safe workload in sterile compounding hospital pharmacy services.

Purpose: A prospective observational study was conducted to assess sterile compounding time and workforce requirements in a hospital pharmacy, resulting in development of staff benchmarking metrics.

Methods: The study was conducted in the IV room of a quaternary hospital over 2 periods totalling 7 weeks. Compounding was directly observed and timing data collected for each compounded sterile preparation (CSP).