Object documentationDrug

 

A drug is administered to a patient, dispensed or a prescription printed during the treatment of an illness or for diagnostic purposes.

 

Drugs, as described here, are an essential element of the Medication component.

Structure

Drugs consist of agents.

It is possible to differentiate between agents using their agent type and their effect.

  • An agent which is mainly responsible for the effect of the drug has the "Agent" agent role.

  • Agents which support or enhance the effect of the drug can have, for example, the following agent roles:

    • Auxiliary Agent

    • Coloring Agent

    • Ingredient, Excipient

    • Further Ingredient

    • Preservative

    • Extraction Agent

    • Equivalent (an equivalent refers to a different agent, e.g. the equivalent quantity of an acid for a salt which occurs in a drug)

A mixed drug consists of other drugs. These other drugs are then known as ingredients.

Ingredients are divided into the following ingredient types:

  • Active ingredient of drug

  • Ingredient of drug

  • Solution

  • Additive of drug (only available for nutritional solutions)

  • Drug of drug kit (only available for drug kits)

When searching for drugs the system differentiates between the drug categories:

  • Standard drugs

  • Infusion (IV)

    Caution Caution

    Note that the drug category for dilutions is no longer available. If you had already created drugs as dilutions before the implementation of the new drug management, you must change the drug category of this drug and use a drug category for infusions.

    End of the caution.

  • Nutritional solution (TPN)

  • Compound

  • Drug kit

    Note that drugs which are part of a drug kit can only be assigned to exactly one drug kit.

A standard drug only contains agents. Drugs of the "infusion", "nutritional solution" and "compound" drug category with "Standard Drug" as the type of drug category (standard infusions, nutritional solutions and compounds) also contain only agents. All drugs of other drug categories contain ingredients and therefore, indirectly also agents, which result from the composition of the ingredients.

When ordering a drug the drug category is also used to control the entry of specific data such as the flow rate of an infusion.

The drug can be manufactured by a manufacturer (premade drug) or by an employee of the hospital such as, for example, the pharmacist or a nurse at the care unit.

For infusions and nutritional solutions the following recipe information must be entered:

  • The reference dose corresponds to the recipe quantity and determines the overall quantity of the preparation. The unit of this reference dose must be a unit with the "volume" dimension.

  • For the individual ingredients you must use the quantity and possibly also the equivalent quantity (in a unit of the volume dimension) entries relating to the recipe quantity. You must also define the ingredient type.

Classification

Using the classifications you can assign drugs to classification systems such as, for example, ATC (Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification) or the Yellow List.

Integration

You manage drugs in an internal catalog (formulary).

In the internal catalog you can also manually enter or edit drugs. You enter or edit drugs in the Manage Drugs function.

In drug management you can create and manage the drugs of an internal catalog at different drug levels and connect these with each other in order to build a drug hierarchy.

See Drug Level

Note Note

If you had already created drugs before the introduction of the drug levels, the system will flag these as brand drugs with package information of the lowest drug level.

End of the note.

If you have assigned drugs of lower levels to a drug of a higher drug level, the system will automatically pass on information from the higher drug to the lower drugs in this drug hierarchy.

See Inheritance of Attribute Values to Subordinate Drugs

Caution Caution

The following drugs cannot be assigned to another drug and therefore included in a drug hierarchy.

  • Drugs of the patient's own medication (Pat. Own Med. indicator on the General tab page in the drug master)

  • Drugs where the Type of Drug Category is not equal to the value "Standard Drugs" (for example infusions with the "Fixed" or "Changeable" type of drug category)

End of the caution.