Workforce planning and safe workload in sterile compounding hospital pharmacy services

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.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). The primary objective was to assess CSP workload, compounding time requirements, and workforce requirements to enable development of a data-driven staffing benchmark.A total of 320 sterile product preparations were directly observed during the study. Overall, the average time to compound 1 CSP (including small- and large-volume parenteral solutions, chemotherapy CSPs, batched CSPs, and syringes) was 3.25 minutes. Chemotherapy CSPs had the longest average preparation time (17.74 minutes); batched CSPs had the shortest preparation time, at 1.90 minutes per unit. A safe workload analysis indicated that in an 8-hour shift, 1 pharmacy technician can safely prepare 253 batched CSPs; 148 preparations of SVP solutions, LVP solutions, and syringes combined; 31 parenteral nutrition solutions prepared using an automated device; or 29 chemotherapy preparations. Through extrapolation of these results, it was calculated that a hospital with a capacity of 100 beds would require 1.4 pharmacist full-time equivalents (FTEs) and 2.7 technician FTEs to meet its sterile compounding needs, with proportionate increases in those estimates for a 300-bed hospital.Organizations wishing to use external benchmarking information need to understand data characterization, pharmacy services offered, automation, workflows, and workload before utilizing that information for workforce planning.