Does your Sterile Compounding CPE need improvement?

Compliance with standards is of great importance, not just because of the consequences of non-compliance with regulatory authorities, but truly for the safety of our patients. Many CE programs for compounding tend to focus on the standards themselves which is great, but falls short when it comes to the real details of HOW to follow the standards.

I’d like to relay a quick hypothetical example of how “non-compliance” issues can cause real harm. This actually comes from a TED talk; Salman Kahn, the founder of Kahn academy, starts out talking about our education system and how easy it is for us to get passing grades yet not fully be competent in all the necessary skills we need to progress on to the next grade.

He compares this to building a house. If we graded houses in the same way we grade individuals within our education system, we may have a whole lot more “failures” in the construction of homes. Let’s say we start our foundation and the building inspector gives us an A. Great, we’re off to a good start. The first floor is then built but there were some issues in the construction and the building inspector gives the first floor a B. The second floor is built and yet there were more issues, this floor gets a C. Still passing but not quite up to par with where we should be. Then the roof gets put on the house and it collapses. What went wrong?

This is a great metaphor. Think about this in terms of our own education and the importance of not just knowing 70 or 80% of the material (enough to pass), but we need to be competent in all areas of compounding and be able to perform consistently so our preparations are safe for the patient.

Let’s look at what our current education for compounding typically looks like and compare that to a potential future state of education of learning for compounding. Currently, training can be long and full of a lot of details about standards but falls short on the details of HOW to comply with those standards. Continuing education typically is in the form of written word, where we must read a lot of text to fully understand the concepts being taught. Some education is in the form of what more or less looks like a slideshow with a lot of text.

I contend that we might be using the wrong tool(s) for a specific job. Compounding is one of those skills that there’s a lot of hands on training that needs to be done prior to an operator being competent and able to properly perform their job function. What this really entails is someone showing the operator in training HOW to perform individual tasks so again, they’re able to perform consistently in a manner that will not only be compliant with standards but for instance keeping contamination to a minimum while compounding.

Videos on the internet of how to do nearly anything is available and it’s ubiquitous at this point for people to seek guidance from YouTube for properly performing certain tasks by showing enough detail do-it-yourself. This same concept for the sake of continuing education specifically for compounding has not really been utilized by many programs. In my opinion, this is exactly what we need. Videos that demonstrate the “how” to do “x” task and also gives us the “why” we do it this way, not only for compliance purposes but the reasoning in real terms should be explained. This is the level of understanding we need to attain for properly and safely compounding medications.

I’m not the only one who thinks video demonstrations might be a good idea. Although the number of respondents to this poll is small, the results are overwhelmingly in favor of video demonstrations.

Let’s take a look at an example of what a video demonstration might look like. I’ve selected one of the videos from the Sterile Compounding Course that’s available on learn.lyceumce.com. This particular video is from the Environmental Monitoring section for Surface Sampling. If you’re doing surface sampling at your facility; let’s check to see you’re doing it correctly.

The video-based Sterile Compounding Course may seem like a bit of an experiment. It is ALL videos, with voice-overs to walk the viewer through the process. This is just one video of over 50 available in the course. All of the videos are 3-6 minutes in length and you can start and stop the videos, watch over and over as many times as the learner would like.

But that’s not where this course stops. One other aspect I feel like is missing is interaction with other learners. What if you had a question about what you just learned. You can ask co-workers and they may know the answer to the question. What if they don’t? This course gives you the ability to reach beyond the borders of your own facility and ask others working elsewhere or even the course instructor themselves. Instant messaging, groups and forum discussions are all part of this Sterile Compounding Course.

I urge you, as a pharmacist, technician or Director of Pharmacy to ask yourselves if your sterile compounding learning program is doing what it’s supposed to be doing: keeping you compliant and your patients safe. The course I mention is available with CE credits or without any CE credits for FREE, because knowing how to properly operate in an aseptic environment is that important.