Neonatal Standards
Neonatal Pharmacy staffing on Neonatal Units - NPPG
About Neonatal Pharmacy
The role of the Pharmacist is essential to ensuring safe and effective use of medicines in neonates. Their in-depth knowledge is necessary to optimise medication choice and dosing regimens, as well as ensuring appropriate monitoring, thus improving safety around medicines use in neonates. Pharmacists are also involved in the development and maintenance of electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems (EPMAs) as well as intravenous drug pump libraries. These systems help ensure safe and effective medicines use. Pharmacists are also pivotal to the training and support of medical and nursing staff and other allied professionals to ensure that medicines are appropriately utilised within this population, where the majority of medicines are unlicensed. Use of parenteral nutrition within the neonatal population is both widespread and challenging, and necessitates special knowledge beyond that required to provide parenteral nutrition to the adult population. Pharmacists are also a key component of neonatal clinical governance and provide expert knowledge to help improve safety of medicines in this vulnerable patient group.
Professional Groups
The Neonatal and Paediatric Pharmacists Group (NPPG) aims to improve the care of neonates, infants and children by advancing the personal development of pharmacists and the provision of quality pharmacy services in relation to practice, research and audit, education and training, communication and advice.