Accompanying physicians for optimizing drug therapies

With the vision of international standard in healthcare, from the establishment since 2012, Vinmec International Hospitals system focuses in developing Clinical Pharmacy activities, in combination with a varieties of specialties, contributing to bring about the optimal treatment for patients.

Clinical pharmacy is one of the professional team in Pharmacy department, with the role of providing counselling and drug information service for healthcare professionals as well as patients, warranting the safe and efficient drug use. Starting with merely three clinical pharmacists in the first days, number of clinical pharmacists across 7 hospitals has reached 25. Being accompanied with the leader with a clear vision – Dr. Pharm. Phan Quynh Lan, the dynamic and energetic clinical pharmacy team is one of the core component of enhancing quality and safety of drug use activities in the hospitals.

With the patient-centered model, clinical pharmacists actively take part in the multi-disciplinary team (physicians – pharmacists – nurses) with specified activities and services:

• Taking drug use history and reconciling for drugs used prior to admission; reviewing medical order during hospital stay, advising physician and supporting clinical decision-makings, counselling patients, enhancing the knowledge and adherence after discharge. As the result, the drug therapy of patient is warranted intergrated and adequate.
• Pharmacovigillance activities:

+ Managing adverse drug reaction (ADR): ward clinical pharmacists actively detect, record, report and monitor adverse drug reaction of patients during hospital stay. These patients will be issued alert card and counselled to avoid similar reactions in the future.

+ Managing medical errors (ME): with reported errors in the hospital, clinical pharmacists coordinate with related bodies to implement root cause analysis and detect system errors to fix and prevent recurrence.

• Therapy drug monitoring (TDM): with narrow therapeutic index (e.g vancomycin, amikacin, tacrolimus etc.), clinical pharmacists support physicians calculating loading dose, time to take blood sample, interpretation of results and dosing adjustment as needed.
• Monitoring drug use for preoperative patients: clinical pharmacists review and cooperate with physicians to plan perioperation drug use regimen; evaluating thromboembolism risk and suggest prevention method.

Monitoring chemotherapy patients: clinical pharmacists participate in detect, manage and prevent adverse reactions of drug and chemotherapy for patients after each cycle; counsel patients of adverse events and home care notices using Chemocard.

Clinical pharmacy activities are highly appreciated by JCI (Joint Commission International) specialists, which largely contributed to the successful accreditation of JCI of Vinmec Times City International Hospital (Apr 2015 and Apr 2018) as well as Central Park Vinmec Hospital (Jun 2018)

Maintaining the dawn of development, Vinmec clinical pharmacy is oriented towards the Australian standard, improving the role of clinical pharmacists in multi-disciplinary team. Clinical pharmacists annually take part in specialized training (oncology, cardiology, IVF, transplantation etc.), observation in advanced model in the world. Vinmec hospitals system cooperates with experts from Australia (Alfred hospital, Royal North Shore hospital), America (Pennsylvania University) to evaluate, educate and plan for the professional development for clinical pharmacists. These moves are expected to support the development of clinical pharmacy of Vinmec Healthcare system and “Provide the perfect choice of healthcare” for patients.