Catharina Hospital is the second hospital in the Netherlands that can prepare its own syringes with filling machines.
By using filling machines and ‘ready to use’ syringes, medication can be administered more efficiently and accurately, the hospital says.
Normally, nurses have to ‘pull’ up medication themselves with the syringe from the bottle and then mix it. The filling machines automates this process. The hospital used the syringes for the first time during the first wave of the Corona crisis, together with a hospital in Zwolle.
Because of the crisis, the facilities to use the machines were made ready in an accelerated manner. A clean room has to be available for the use of the filling machines. Clean rooms are normally used in the high-tech industry by companies such as ASML.
Cleaner than clean
However, the Catharina Hospital needs an even cleaner clean room. While it is important for the high-tech manufacturing industry that there is no dust in the room, it is also important that there are no micro organisms in the hospital. Moreover, the clean room was built up in three weeks.
Self-sufficient
The development ensures that the hospital is more resilient in times of great need. If medicine production outside the hospital is stalled due to shortages, the hospital pharmacy can supply medication such as pain relief itself. “Due to the Corona crisis there was a shortage of ampules and vials of medicine”, hospital pharmacist, Ralph van Wezel, says. “We prepare medicines ourselves from raw materials and fill the syringes ourselves. That saves materials and we are completely self-sufficient”.
There are currently ten hospitals in the Netherlands with their own preparation pharmacies, the hospital informed.
Source: www.studio040.nl
Translated by: Bob
