Brown , Lawrence H., Wojcik, Susan M., Bailey, Leonard C., and Tran, Calvin D. (2006) Can sock rotation effectively mitigate EMS medication exposure to excessive heat and cold? American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 24 (1). pp. 14-18.

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Abstract

The United States Pharmacopeia recently published a general chapter specifically addressing on-ambulance storage of medications, including a suggestion for stock rotation. This study describes the effectiveness of a simple stock rotation strategy in mitigating EMS medication exposure to excessive heat and cold. Previously collected on-ambulance temperature data from 5 US cities were randomly re-sampled to generate model exposures of 2 days to 6 months duration. The temperature measurements for every other 24-hour period were then set at 20°C to model the rotation of medications into a controlled environment. For each model, we then determined consistency with the official United States Pharmacopeia definition of controlled room temperature. Without stock rotation, excessive heat occurred in 39.9% of the model exposures. With stock rotation, exposures to excessive heat occurred in less than 1% of northern city models and in 2.9% of the central US models. Stock rotation did not reduce heat exposures in the models for southern cities.

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