in this hospital, it is an automatic machine that prepares and packages the medicines

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Automated individual nominative dispensing (Dina). Behind this name, which smacks of high administration, hides a very sophisticated process which has equipped, since October 2012, the pharmacy of the Centre-Bretagne Hospital Group, in Kerio, in Noyal-Pontivy (Morbihan).

23 agents at the pharmacy

For more than ten years, therefore, medications prescribed to patients in SMR (Medical Care and Rehabilitation) services, USDL (Long-Term Care Unit) and residents of Ehpad (Accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people) of the GHCB, or 1,150 beds, are prepared thanks to Dina.

This consists of preparing the doses to be administered using a Preparation of Dose to Administer (PDA) machine, then carrying out a qualitative and quantitative control of the doses prepared before shipment to the various sites of the hospital group: Pontivy, Loudéac , Plémet and Guémené-sur-Scorff.

The GHCB pharmacy has 23 agents: seven pharmacists, 12 preparers, two storekeepers, a secretary and a service manager.

500 drug references

First step of the process: each prescription is analyzed then validated by a pharmacist. During this time, pharmacy technicians unpack the medications received at Kerio either in bulk or in blister packs to feed the PDA machine. The GCCH pharmacy has around 500 different references in its reserves.

The unpackaging of each medicinal specialty is traced electronically. All medical prescriptions are then extracted from the prescription software and sent to the PDA machine for production.

800 sachets every day

The machine, which contains 250 different medications, will then produce individualized medication doses in the form of sachets.

One sachet = one prescription for one patient.

800 sachets are produced per day, or 2.5 million each year, made from Monday to Friday.

Here again, the prescription is verified using an automatic optical controller (a viewer) which visually recognizes each medication. The rare “errors” come from the fact that the drugs appear on the edge. Regardless, if in doubt, there is always a preparer to “remove the doubt”.

Save time for nurses

The bags are then sent to the different departments, where the nurse carries out a final check.

“It saves a lot of time for nurses: they no longer have to spend two hours a day filling pill boxes. Before, each department had its own medicine cabinet and it was the nurses who took care of the pill boxes. The time saved today is redeployed for care of patients and residents,” confides Nathalie Le Goff.

One of the first PDAs in Brittany

The Center-Bretagne Hospital Group was one of the first healthcare establishments in Brittany to deploy PDA.

In 2023, the GHCB reinvested around 200,000 euros in the creation of a production room dedicated to the PDA, in the renewal of the PDA automaton and in the acquisition of traceability software for the unpackaging of specialties medicinal products. By 2026, the GHCB pharmacy would like to acquire a second machine. Price: 200,000 euros.

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