Clinical pharmacy services and research for lymphoma patients at a cancer center

Abstract

At the National Cancer Centre Singapore, which is currently the largest ambulatory cancer centre in Singapore, clinical pharmacists have taken upon responsibilities to provide direct pharmaceutical care in the center’s lymphoma team since 2006. Given the complexity and intricacies of lymphoma treatments, clinical pharmacists are often positioned to ensure supportive care is optimized among these patients. Besides management of chemotherapy-related and supportive care issues, clinical pharmacists play a pivotal role in guiding cost-effective and safe prescribing. In collaboration with the medical team, they are also involved in conducting practice research in order to optimize the delivery of pharmaceutical care. In this report, the dedicated services and research activities conducted by clinical pharmacists of a lymphoma team will be discussed.

Clinical oncology pharmacist: Effective contribution to patient safety

“…25 Chan et al reported a 97% acceptability rate for pharmaceutical interventions in an oncology center, close to ours which corresponded to 99.42%. 26 On the other hand, a Brazilian study by Reis et al obtained 76.32% acceptability for interventions carried out in the Adult ICU, Cardiac ICU, and Inpatient Cardiology Clinic Unity. 16 High rates of acceptability show that the clinical staff recognizes the pharmacist as a safe and reliable source of information about drugs.…”

“…reported a 97% acceptability rate for pharmaceutical interventions in an oncology center, close to ours which corresponded to 99.42%. 26 On the other hand, a Brazilian study by Reis et al. obtained 76.32% acceptability for interventions carried out in the Adult ICU, Cardiac ICU, and Inpatient Cardiology Clinic Unity.…”

Clinical pharmacy services that influence prescribing in the Western Pacific Region based on the FIP Basel Statements

“…Asia is a region that is rapidly increasing its provision of clinical pharmacy services, with reports in the literature from China [19][20][21][22], Singapore [23,24], Taiwan [25,26] and Hong Kong [27]. These countries are located in the Western Pacific Region (WPR), which represents one quarter of the world's population ( Fig.…”

Prescribing errors intercepted by pharmacist intervention in care of patients hospitalised with breast and gynaecological cancer at a Brazilian teaching hospital

“…Such prescriptions may include a high number of medications such as chemotherapeutic agents, medications for the alimentary tract and metabolism, nervous system medications, anti‐infective medications for systemic use and blood and hematopoietic organs, and medications for comorbidities unrelated to the cancer. Many of these medications have high potential for drug interactions, dose and frequency adjustments, and adverse side effects, and medication errors may occur (Alshaikh, Mayet, & Aljadhey, ; Chan et al., ; Delpeuch, Leveque, Gourieux, & Herbrecht, ; Koyyalagunta et al., ; Li, Morway, Velasquez, Weingart, & Stuver, ; Stoll & Kopittke, ).…”