Department of Pharmacy

Taipei Veterans General Hospital is a national teaching-based medical center, and the pharmacy department is staffed with approximately 200 pharmacists and 15 assistants. The average service volume is about 10,000 ambulatory patients per day and around 3100 in-patient beds.

The pharmacy department consists of 3 divisions: dispensing, clinical pharmacy, and compounding. The responsibilities of the department include

1. Medication supply and management;
2. Dispensing services: including ambulatory, emergency, in-patient, and traditional medicine prescriptions;
3. Compounding services: such as preparations for total parenteral nutrition (TPN), cancer chemotherapeutic infusion products;
4. Clinical pharmacy services: ranging from prescription verification/evaluations, patient medication education, drug information services, ward rounds, therapeutic drug monitoring, and pharmacist-run clinics;
5. Education: the pharmacy department served as training rotations sites for domestic and foreign pharmacy interns, postgraduates, and pharmacists;
6. Research and publications: the pharmacy department collaborated with domestic and foreign research institutes, and routinely issues the Taipei VGH drug bulletin, Taipei VGH Journal of Hospital Pharmacy, Taipei VGH formulary, and published several books on pharmacy-related topics; and
7. Pharmacy information digitalization.

The pharmacy department is also dedicated to pharmacy administrative management and medication safety-related projects. We are the key member of the P&T Committee and participate in the quality management and infection control committees within the hospital.

We are committed to improving the safety of the medication use process with information technology and have developed and incorporated over 60 error-proofing mechanisms to empower the order entry system. Over 30 synchronous clinical decision support alerting functions, such as dose adjustment checks for patients with impaired renal/hepatic function, maximum dose check for adults and children, infusion fluid and rate compatibilities, perioperative anticoagulant management, etc., and 29 asynchronous decision support functions, such as contrast media and medication allergy notifications, medication and corresponding indication checks, drug appearance and package insert links, etc. were incorporated to ensure appropriate prescribing.

Several self-developed systems such as the drug information app which enables patient’s easy access to more detailed drug information, the prescription verification system and pharmacist service system designed to assist pharmacists to perform prescription evaluation efficiently, bar-code assisted inventory management and digitalized medication shelf labeling to improve the precision of inventory control, automated dispensers for both oral medications and injections, intelligent in-patient dispensing system, smart dispensing cabinets for traditional medicine, automated dispensing cabinets for controlled medications were introduced to secure drug dispensing accuracy, all the efforts were made to ensure medication use safety. The pharmacy department is the pioneer for establishing anticoagulation, transplantation, and poly-pharmacy integration pharmacist-run clinics, which provide advanced consultation services for the specialized patient groups and marks the milestone for clinical pharmacy services in Taiwan.

The pharmacy department collaborated with the Federation of Asian Pharmaceutical Associations (FAPA) and served as the designated international training center, and hosts the annual Good Pharmacy Practice International Training Program since 2012. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we initiated the project to put together an infection control recommendation for hospital pharmacists and pharmacy leaders, with the aim for the protection of hospital pharmacists, and to reduce the transmission within each facility and maintain the functional health care system. The recommendation was also made available on the FAPA and FIP official websites with open access.

We have received several honors for pharmacy-lead projects, such as the perioperative anticoagulant management project and the pill identifier app each received the National Health Quality Award. The Intelligent Anticoagulation Clinic Service System was granted a patent and technology transfer on the novel warfarin use safety and efficacy assessment tool. We have also been awarded the Symbol of Smart Hospital. Director of the pharmacy department, Dr. Yuh-Lih Chang received the 2018 FAPA Ishidate Award in recognition of his achievements in the hospital and clinical pharmacy area and was elected as the section chair of the hospital and clinical pharmacy section of FAPA (2019-2022) and president elect of FAPA (2023-2026).

In the area of teaching and research, the pharmacy department actively collaborates and has signed MOUs with both domestic and foreign institutes, including the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, the University of Washington, Seattle, and several distinguished universities in Thailand and Vietnam. Together with National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), the pharmacy department established the clinical pharmacy master's program in 2008, which further improved the strength and quality of our research capacity. Given our capacities in offering comprehensive pharmaceutical care services and our commitment to teaching and research, we are proud to be the national model.

We stand by our core values of providing excellent pharmacy services, empowering the pharmacist's profession, effective management, and maintaining sustainable development. We will continue to reform and refine our services through incorporating information technology into the medication use process, advancing clinical pharmacy services, developing staff competency, and strengthening the quality of our research and publications. We shall make every effort to fulfill our vision of being a world-leading center for pharmaceutical care services, education, and research.
 

Online prescription pharmacist verification system

The innovativelabeling of prescription medicine bag has received many honors such as national championship of quality improvement and patient safety special awards granted by Taiwan Joint Commission on hospital Accreditation (TJCHA)

Automatic dispensing machines and unit dos package

Sterile product preparations and Closed System Transfer Device (CSTD) for chemotherapy intravenous solution (spike, adapter, and IV set)

Inpatient medication counseling and drug information kiosk