The pharmacy at Arkansas Children’s Hospital is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These pharmacists are available for consulting for medication questions or recommendations. In addition to phone consult, the clinical pharmacists respond to the emergency department for any Level 1 trauma, intubation, resuscitation, or any other critical patient. The pharmacists coming to the emergency department for critical patients are able to draw up emergency medications at the bedside and aid with other medication needs.
There is also a clinical pharmacist staffed in the emergency department 40 hours a week. This pharmacist is directly available to help physicians and nurses with medication recommendations, doses, or administration concerns. Counseling patients, confirming vaccination records, completing home medication reconciliation, and coordinating discharge prescriptions are some of the additional tasks that are performed by the clinical pharmacist in the emergency department. She is the primary pharmacist liaison for research projects, committees, and pharmacy-related IT issues in the emergency department. The full-time emergency department pharmacist works Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 2:30-11 p.m., and Wednesday and Thursday, 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Kris Saunders, Pharm.D., is the primary pharmacist in the emergency department.