Pharmacy Department

The Pharmacy Department comprises 3 divisions::

• Clinical Pharmacy
• Dispensing
• Compounding

The Pharmacy Division was founded at the beginning of the hospital establishment in 1958, and was promoted as the Pharmacy Department in 1975 owing to business expansion. :

1.    Taipei Veterans General Hospital is a national teaching-based medical center. The average outpatient clinic visit is about 10,000 patient-visits per day and inpatient capacity is around 3000 beds. The main services of our department include: (1) pharmaceutical care services: prescription verification/evaluations, patient medication educations, drug information services, ward rounds, therapeutic drug monitoring, and pharmacist clinics. The clinical specialty pharmacists join various medical cares, intensive care units, and over 10 oncology specialties attending physician rounds or collaborative clinics; (2) dispensing services covering ambulatory, emergency, inpatient and Chinese herbal prescriptions; (3) special dispensing services such as preparations for total parenteral nutrition (TPN), cancer chemotherapeutic infusion products, and KCl intravenous mixtures; (4) drug inventory management; (5) e-pharmacy information; (6) teaching, research and article publication; (7) publications include pharmacy edited books, such as Video Series of Medication Use Instruction, Case-Based Medication Use Evaluation, Problem-Based Learning in Pharmaceutical Care- A case workbook, Journal of Hospital Pharmacy, TVGH Drug Bulletin, and TVGH formulary, etc.

     In the area of dispensing and clinical services, our department fully adopts automatic barcode dispensers and compounder systems to facilitate dispensing operations. We further lead hospital pharmacies nationwide to apply safeguard device (spike & adapter) when prepare intravenous chemotherapies to ensure personnel and environmental safety. To promote the quality of dispensing tasks, we install triple check during general dispensing procedures and nine check-points during compounding chemotherapy products. About information technology automation and patient safety aspects, we develop various computerized knowledge databank, automatic error-preventing programs and many useful systems including drug-drug interactions, bilingual prescription medicine bag labeling, drug identity information for inner, middle and outer layers, e-formulary, duplicate orders/dose/route/administration, impaired liver/renal function, drug allergy history, compatibilities and infusion rates for injectable drugs, high risk medication in geriatrics and pregnancy medication safety, medication error reporting, adverse drug reaction and drug quality reporting, drug information/patient counseling, videos of medication use instruction, intelligent Pharmacist Service System (IPSS), and online prescription verification system, etc.. We not only offer the physicians, pharmacists, nurses and patients to utilize information, but also enormously improve treatment effectiveness and safety. We initiate pharmacist-run anti-coagulant and transplantation clinics which provide care needs for these special populations and establish a new milestone of clinical pharmacist services.

     The innovated labeling of prescription medicine bag has received many honors such as national championship of Prescription Medicine Bag Labeling, awards granted by Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation （TJCHA） and by the Executive Yuan, and registered patents in Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, leading to nationwide reform in this area. Through triple-check dispensing procedure, we have achieved the highest quality standard of dispensing error rate to below 6 σ. The high quality outpatient pharmacy service also receives Symbol of National Quality (SNQ) accreditation. The drug identity information system has also highly recognized and honored by the Executive Yuan. The department director Dr. Yueh-Ching Chou, has received 2014 FAPA Ishidate Award for outstanding hospital pharmacy services and TPEVGH 50th anniversary Innovative Medical Technology and Great Achievement Award. Our outstanding achievements have received the invitation from Federation of Asia Pharmaceutical Association and the Pharmaceutical Society of Taiwan to join their collaborative works. We have become Taiwan International Pharmacy Collaboration and development center and training ground for promoting international pharmacy profession since 2013. We have kept pace with pharmacy professions among other nations and together to advance the quality of international pharmaceutical care services. In teaching and research area, to promote clinical knowledge for pharmacy students and staff pharmacists, we incorporate various teaching models, such as PBL (Problem-Based Learning), EBM (Evidence-Based Medicine), DOPS (Direct Observation of Procedural Skills) and OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) into our routine educational trainings. We collaborate with National Yang-Ming University to develop Clinical Pharmacy master program since 2008. Many high quality clinical pharmacy professionals have graduated and successfully published high standard peer reviewed articles. We are proud to be the national model in view of our capacities in offering comprehensive pharmaceutical care services and our engagement in teaching and research.

     We stand by our core values include keeping outstanding, innovation, cooperation, honesty, caring, and accountability. To achieve our mission “To provide excellent pharmacy services, empower pharmacist’s profession, manage effectively and operate everlastingly”, we will continue to reform in the aspects such as establishing more medication safety systems by applying information technology, sharpening in clinical pharmacy services, and committing ourselves to breed more teaching and research competent personnel and strengthening the quality of SCI publications. We shall make every effort to fulfill our visions of being a world leading center for pharmaceutical care services, education and research.

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