The Department is composed of over 360 pharmacists, interns, pharmacy technicians, nurses and other support staff committed to providing excellent pharmaceutical care over five (5) separate campuses. The Department has affiliations with several schools of pharmacy across the nation and serves as a clerkship site for these institutions.
The Department offers centralized IV admixture and unit-dose distribution, and decentralized clinical pharmacy services. The Department utilizes automated dispensing machines, or Pyxis, located in every patient care area, and bar coding, both for tracking the mixing and checking of the medication by pharmacy and the administration of the medication by nursing. All campuses are staffed 24-hours-per-day, seven-days-per-week. Practice sites are located on five (5) campuses and include inpatient and outpatient services.
The Department of Pharmacy offers decentralized clinical services for Swedish's multiple specialties which include cardiology, emergency medicine, cardiac/critical/medical/neonatal/neurology/pediatrics/surgical intensive care units, inpatient and outpatient oncology, pediatrics, liver/kidney/pancreas/stem cell transplantation, high risk obstetrics/gynecological, general medicine, general surgery, renal/urology, orthopedics, neurology, orthopedic rehabilitation, and sleep medicine. Swedish is the largest and most comprehensive hospital in the Pacific Northwest with 1245 licensed beds.
Our decentralized patient care area pharmacists (PCAPs) work closely with physicians, nurses and other health care workers to provide excellent patient care by monitoring and prescribing under collaborative drug therapy agreements (CDTAs): select antibiotics (i.e. aminoglycosides, vancomycin), total parenteral nutrition, anticoagulation therapy (i.e. warfarin, heparin infusion, argatroban, bivalirudin), anemia management, adult renal adjustment of medications, IV to PO conversion, antiepileptics (i.e. phenytoin, valproic acid), and other dosing services upon request. We also operate the outpatient oncology infusion service, coordinated with the Swedish Cancer Institute, and an investigational drug service.
