Ensuring safe and quality medication use in nuclear medicine: a collaborative team achieves compliance with medication management standards.

As hospital nuclear medicine departments were established in the 1960s and 1970s, each department developed detailed policies and procedures to meet the specialized and specific handling requirements of radiopharmaceuticals. In many health systems, radiopharmaceuticals are still unique as the only drugs not under the control of the health system pharmacy; however, the clear trend--and now an accreditation requirement--is to merge radiopharmaceutical management with the overall health system medication management system. Accomplishing this can be a challenge for both nuclear medicine and pharmacy because each lacks knowledge of the specifics and needs of the other field. In this paper we will first describe medication management standards, what they cover, and how they are enforced. We will describe how we created a nuclear medicine and pharmacy team to achieve compliance, and we will present the results of their work. We will examine several specific issues raised by incorporating radiopharmaceuticals in the medication management process and describe how our team addressed those issues. Finally, we will look at how the medication management process helps ensure ongoing quality and safety to patients through multiple periodic reviews. The reader will gain an understanding of medication management standards and how they apply to nuclear medicine, learn how a nuclear medicine and pharmacy team can effectively merge nuclear medicine and pharmacy processes, and gain the ability to achieve compliance at the reader's own institution.