Written by
Sarah Eddington
Monroe pharmacist Kay Chandler, who has been compounding medications for more than a decade, says she has seen her work help countless people when other methods have failed.
“When you’re a compounding pharmacist, you reap the reward of helping a patient who was otherwise very distraught and didn’t know what else to do or where else to go,” she said. “Oftentimes, we’re not the first line of care. We’re the people patients go to when the first line of care didn’t work.”
Pharmacy compounding is the mixing, combining or altering of ingredients of a prescription drug to create a medication tailored to the medical needs of an individual patient. Traditional compounding is typically used to prepare medications that are not available commercially.
For example, if a child can’t swallow a pill and needs a medicine in a liquid form not otherwise available, compounding would serve an important role.
Or if a person is allergic or can’t tolerate an ingredient in a manufactured drug and needs a medication to be made without that ingredient, compounding would come into play.
Compounded drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but each compounding pharmacy is licensed by its state’s board of pharmacy, which has primary responsibility for oversight.
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