Time savings associated with dispensing unit-of-use packages.

Objectives: To determine how much time can be saved with the use of unit-of-use packaging in a community pharmacy, the distribution of work between the pharmacist and the pharmacy technician when unit-of-use packaging is used, and the number of errors that occur when either unit-of-use or bulk packaging is used in dispensing prescriptions.

Design: A simulation comparing count-and-pour dispensing with unit-of-use package dispensing.

Setting: An independent community pharmacy.

Participants: Two teams, each composed of one pharmacist and one pharmacy technician.

Intervention: Each team prepared 50 typical prescription orders, once using unit-of-use packaging and once by transferring medication from a bulk container.

Main Outcome Measures: Time needed to dispense 50 prescriptions, dispensing activities performed by technicians and pharmacists, and number of dispensing errors.

Results: The time saved with unit-of-use packaging compared with count-and-pour dispensing was 46.5 minutes per 100 prescriptions, which represents an average time savings of more than 27 seconds per prescrition. In the bulk package dispensing simulation, the pharmacists assisted in retrieving and counting medication for 26% of the prescriptions. This percentage dropped to 4% when unit-of-use packaging was used because the technicians dispensed prescriptions at a rate that occupied the pharmacist with verifying the prescription orders and dispensed products. Each team committed two counting errors when executing the bulk package trial and no errors when using unit-of-use packaging.

Conclusion: Unit-of-use packaging can reduce the time needed for and increase the efficiency of pharmacists' dispensing activities. Unit-of-use packaging may also reduce the number of counting errors.