Dispensing of Drug to Outpatient / Ambulatory Patients: It is also called ambulatory services and refers to those patients who are not occupying beds in hospitals or in clinics, health centers, and other places when they come for consultation and diagnosis, treatment.
Categories of Ambulatory Services
- Emergency outpatients
- Referred outpatients
- Special outpatient
- General outpatients
Emergency Outpatients: For emergency outpatient, 24 hours services are given who require immediate care for survival.
Referred Outpatient: These patients are referred to the hospital for a specific purpose due to lack of facilities available with the private clinic practitioners or patient who needs extra care.
Special Outpatient: After compilation of general check-ups, the patients are asked to go for accurate diagnosis by clinical, pathological, or radiological examination. After receiving the test report of examination medicine is given to him.
General Outpatient: These patients come for a general checkup and medicines are prescribed to them. They may either undertake minor surgery, superficial surgery, or dressing at a hospital.
Outpatient decides the image of the hospital as per the services received by them. Thus, it is essential to look into the following aspects while designing the hospital care service.
- Separate waiting room with appropriate seating facilities.
- a Sufficient number of service windows and a separate facility for women.
- Provision for adequate light and ventilation.
The social aspects must be considered to carry out dispensing services.
Routine Dispensing of Out-patient
- Patients take written prescription by the Physician, which is given to the pharmacist where it is dispensed.
- The pharmacist guarantees that the patient gets the right medication.
- The pharmacist gives instructions to the patient about dispensed medicine.
- Labeling of medicine.
- Maintenance of payments by Pharmacist.
- Finally, payment by the patient.
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