Biomechanical evaluation of physical constraints associated with sterile compounding in a hospital pharmacy department

Background: There are no published data on the ergonomics of sterile compounding in pharmacy. Objective: To analyse the physical constraints associated with sterile compounding in pharmacy. Methods: This observational study of the physical constraints associated with sterile compounding of medications, conducted in the hospital pharmacy of CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal, used an electromyography system, combined with sequential video recordings. The percentage of muscles used (PMU) for these activities was calculated. Results: A total of 876 different manipulations of 36 different types were evaluated. Of the 23 types that had more than 10 observations, 831 manipulations were used to calculate the PMU. The mean PMU was less than 5% in 39.9% of cases, between 5% and 10% in 54.2% of cases, and more than 10% in 5.9% of cases. The mean PMU was more than 10% in microenvironments with glove ports and soft (7.1% of observations) or solid panel (10.9% of observations), but not in the solid-panel microenvironment. Conclusion: This study has described the physical constraints and PMU associated with different types of compounding for three types of equipment. Further studies are required to compare the ergonomics of the different enclosures currently available.