Glossary
beyond-use date
A beyond-use date is the last date a prepared or opened medication may be used. It is set by the pharmacy from USP standards, not by the manufacturer's expiration date on the stock bottle.
A beyond-use date (BUD) is the date after which a medication that has been prepared, opened or repackaged may no longer be used. It is not the manufacturer's expiration date on the stock bottle. The expiration date belongs to the unopened product as the manufacturer tested it; the BUD belongs to the container the pharmacy just made or opened, and it is always earlier.
USP <795> supplies the defaults for nonsterile preparations when the master formulation record does not set its own: a nonpreserved aqueous preparation keeps 14 days refrigerated, a nonaqueous oral liquid 90 days, and other nonaqueous dosage forms 180 days. For sterile compounding, USP <797> assigns the BUD by category — a Category 1 preparation keeps no more than 12 hours at room temperature or 24 hours refrigerated, while an immediate-use preparation must be begun within 4 hours. The same logic reaches the shelf: a multi-dose vial in use is dated 28 days unless its label says otherwise, because the BUD starts when the stopper is first entered, not when the vial arrives.
The BUD has to reach the patient. It is recorded on the compounding record and printed as the date on the patient's label, and it replaces the stock bottle's expiration date for anything the pharmacy prepared. For a technician the rule is short: never copy the manufacturer's date onto a compounded or opened product, and never keep a preparation past the date the pharmacist assigned it.
Taught in
Related terms
- national drug code — The National Drug Code is the identifier a drug package carries in three segments — labeler, product, package. Labels print it as 10 digits in one of three layouts; billing systems key on an 11-digit padded form.
- days supply — Days supply is how long a dispensed quantity is meant to last: the quantity divided by the amount taken per day. It comes from the sig, not from the size of the package.
- high-alert medication — A high-alert medication is one that bears a heightened risk of significant harm when it is used in error — insulin, heparin, opioids, concentrated electrolytes. The risk is the harm, not a higher error rate.
Source: PTCB — PTCE Content Outline, effective January 6, 2026 (the KA 1.2 statement "Therapeutic duplications", the KA 2.2 and 2.3 statements on controlled substances and prescription requirements, the KA 4.3 and 4.4 statements on NDC, lot, expiration and returns, and the KA 3.1/3.2 error-prevention statements, quoted verbatim); FDA label and NDC data read through openFDA and DailyMed; ISMP (the high-alert medication definition and the error-prone abbreviation list); USP <795> and <797>; the DEA Pharmacist's Manual (outline accessed 2026-10-03, verbatim; every fact below restates this course's own guides, which carry the per-source citations on their own pages (FDA, ISMP, USP and DEA each publish on its own schedule))