Brookdale Pharmacy

The Department of Pharmacy provides the highest quality pharmaceutical care and pharmaceutical services to its patients. Brookdale’s pharmacy was one of the first hospital pharmacies in the New York metropolitan area to provide services 24 hours/day, seven days per week, decentralized clinical services to patients and to implement unit dose distribution, clinical monitoring of drug therapy, a drug information service, and sterile intravenous solution preparation.

Informatics is extensively used in the distribution of medication including profile interface between the pharmacy information system and unit-based automated dispensing machines, cart-less unit-dose distribution, and extensive unit-dose packaging and cart preparation for long term care patients.

The sterile products area provides the following services to all in-patients: an IV admixture service; total parenteral nutrition for adults, pediatrics and neonates; and chemotherapy for in-patients and ambulatory patients.

Clinical pharmacy services include anticoagulant therapy monitoring, Antimicrobial Stewardship, Anticoagulation, and HIV, Hepatitis C, and Medication Management clinics.  In addition clinical pharmacists are present in the Medical ICU, Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Psychiatry and Pediatrics.

Two American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) accredited pharmacy residency programs provide post-graduate pharmacy education.  The PGY-1 Pharmacy Practice and the PGY-2 Ambulatory Care residency programs each enroll 2 residents per year.  The Department of Pharmacy is also an ACPE-accredited continuing pharmacy education provider.

Affiliation with Long Island University’s Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Touro College of Pharmacy affords the department on-site faculty members who facilitate an academic setting for students and residents to receive experiential training. Faculty members include critical care and ambulatory care specialists.

The Drug Information Service provides hospital staff and patients with the opportunity to have up to date drug information and clinical literature and also provides students and residents a setting to learn by responding to drug information questions and evaluating clinical literature.

Both patients and hospital staff benefit from pharmacy patient safety initiatives such as medication safety outreach programs, focused patient education sessions and staff development in diverse areas including insulin management, anticoagulation, antimicrobials, and medication therapy management.

In 2012 the department was honored to receive both the ASHP Best Practices award for contributions to medication management in the ambulatory clinic setting as well as the ASHP CEO’s Award for Courageous Service, for services provided in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.