We need to just constantly be reinforcing the fact that we’re handling substances that are known human carcinogens; our behaviors have a huge impact on the risk of exposure.

Eric Kastango, MBA, BS Pharm, FASHP

Safe and responsible handling starts with you. The way you prepare and handle hazardous drugs in the pharmacy impacts more than your health. USP <800> standards are designed to protect you and your extended team from pharmacy through to nursing.

Implementing USP <800> standards may take additional time and costs, but the protection you’re providing for yourself, your extended team, and your patients is priceless.

What are the risks for pharmacy?

Use this video to:

  • Understand the risks to those who are compounding hazardous drugs.
  • Educate a peer who may not recognize the risks.
  • Help other departments understand why the risk is real and important to address.

So the risk to handling hazardous drugs, it’s not like touching a hot object where you can feel the heat or get a burn. I think that by calling these toxic substances drugs, we look at them from a health care professional and even a patient’s perspective: drugs make you better, they don’t harm you. I think that we really need to embrace these standards a little more and believe them and not be so skeptical.”

Eric Kastango, MBA, BS Pharm, FASHP

This is a little bit different. It’s not as cut and dry evidence as we see in other clinical studies, because it’s something that affects us long term. So something that happens to us today, whether it’s an acute exposure or whether it’s exposure over a long period of time with low doses of chemo or other hazardous drugs, we’re not going to be able to tell right away what it is. So the fact that you don’t notice anything different in yourself, first of all, you’re lucky if that’s the case. And second of all, it doesn’t tell the whole story. We need to know what that whole story is.

Patricia Kiele, RPh, MPA, FASHP

Compounding HD and the necessary PPE.

Infrastructure for Compounding.

Getting Started. People and Processes.

Receiving and Storage.

Managing an HD Spill.

Get Ready for <800>

A useful approach to help conceptualize USP <800> is to think about the journey of an HD through your organization and the HD interaction points. Chapter <800> contains handling requirements from receipt through disposal. 

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