There has been a dramatic increase in use of self-administering biomedicine with increment of patient convenience and cost benefits due to the saturation of synthetic medicine and the revitalization on the biosimilar after the expiration of internatio...
There has been a dramatic increase in use of self-administering biomedicine with increment of patient convenience and cost benefits due to the saturation of synthetic medicine and the revitalization on the biosimilar after the expiration of international patents related to biomedicine. However, despite the increase usage of biomedicine as well as self-administration, few literatures are available that conduct on the safety management and systematic investigation that looks into drug abuse and misuse.
Infertility treatment has been widely used due to social changes such as environmental condition, stress, late marriage, and late pregnancy. This research was specifically focused on methods for effective and safe usage of sex hormone products used in infertility treatment to do systematic investigation that looks into drug abuse, misuse, and safety management. It is required to perform accurate medical counseling in terms of the dose and duration of administration as sex hormone products used in infertility treatment by ovulation induction and hyperstimulation varies for each patient.
Items for sex hormone product were investigated by Druginfo and KIMS online. The item list was reviewed by KFDA EZDrug and FDA label information item current permission. The item list was based on thirty four sex hormone products. The largest group among thirty four items was prefilled syringe. The total number of the prefilled syringe was eighteen out of thirty four.
Survey was carried out for the present (in December, 2013) of usage and education of sex hormone products based on responses of clinics and hospitals. The survey was conducted from May 29 to July 26 in 2013. The response rate was 45.5% (i.e., 20 out of 44). It was found that sex hormone products were in-hospital prescription for all cases. Multi-frequency injections were follitrope○R prefilled syringe 150 IU/0.3ml (55%), follitrope○R prefilled syringe 225 IU/0.45ml (50%), Gonal-f ○Rpen 900 IU (50%), and Ovidrel○R liquid inj. 250μg/0.5ml (50%).
The provision and administration department were analyzed based on the status of usage. The result was that the outpatient pharmacy was the highest frequency provision department and ‘the injection room’ (20%) and‘the patient for himself’ (20%) were the most administration department. The outpatient nurse (32%) was ranked first in ‘self-administering educator of hospitals. The reeducation after first education (55%) was at the top of the reeducation necessity time. Most popular answers for instructional materials of self-administrating sex hormone products were ‘handbook by pharmaceutical company (40%) and ‘medicine instruction’ (40%). Main contents for the instructional materials were ‘instruction’, ‘keeping method’, ‘dosage’, and ‘precaution’.
After questionnaire result analysis general hospitals, interview survey was conducted on doctors and injection educators of hospitals specialized with infertility treatment regarding current situation of education. And then it was investigated education resource of each hospital and patients information on medication of pharmaceutical company. The information on the use and cope with side effect of sex hormone products were given to patients by medication instruction, audiovisual materials, and homepage for hospitals specialized with infertility treatment. Each pharmaceutical company provides patients information on medication through homepages in terms of each medicine. Homepages include explanation of instruction for both patients and professionals and other information related to disease. Result of this study also showed that the pharmaceutical company provides the method of self-administration of each injection, various audiovisual materials such as video display, and community service for patients.
The medication errors were also investigated by interviewing each doctors, injection educator after selecting one of general hospitals, three hospitals specialized with infertility treatment based on multiple frequency of self-administering sex hormone products. The medication errors were collected for the cases of patients administered sex hormone products. And then they were grouped with dosage error, usage error, administrating method error, and keeping method error.
There are multiple hurdles to guide medication in hospital since the standards of total information providing information on safe administration of self-administered sex hormone products were not rich in South Korea. In December 2013, each pharmaceutical company gives patients information on safe administration of self-administered sex hormone based on instruction of each injection. In this research, result shows that there is a shortage of standard information on many types of medicine although experts provide some instructional materials to patients. To overcome this situation, it is required to construct standardized and systematic medication guide enabling easy access to good quality of information. Standard medication guide by easily assessable and systematic contents is able to increase the safety level of biomedicine and then it will result in safe and effective medication treatment, less visit to hospital, and cost reduction.