Taipei City Hospital

In January of 2005, the ten municipal hospitals in Taipei were merged and became one united hospital called Taipei City Hospital, which has nine branches at present. The Department of Pharmacy is one of the important paramedical units ofTaipei City Hospital.

　　The visions of the Taipei City Hospital are: patient-centered care aiming toward excellence and healthy citizens. In order to fulfill the goals of the hospital, the Department of Pharmacy manages not only the quality of the internal services, but also collaborate with community pharmacies and long-term care facilities to promote health, to prevent disease and to enhance the self-care functions of all citizens living in Taipei. In order to implement the government’s policy on the separation of dispensing from medical practice, Taipei City Hospital is the most successful promoter of releasing outpatient prescriptions to be dispensed by community pharmacies. To provide a professional pharmaceutical service, the department of pharmacy has planed and executed many continuing education programs, such as long-term care pharmaceutical service, DOPS, OSCE and mini-CEX as part of pharmacy practice training, medication safety, and so on.

The pharmacist receives a license after he/she passes the National Board Examination. The pharmacist’s main purposes are to provide efficacious drugs to the society and to promote safe and appropriate use of medications. Therefore, the mission of the Department of Pharmacy is to fulfill patient-centered needs in terms of drug therapy, to responsibly provide good products and pharmaceutical care, to ensure that all drug therapies are used appropriate for each medical condition, to ensure that the drug therapy is both effective and safe, and to make sure that the patient is able and willing to take the medication as intended.

　　The Department of Pharmacy is the headquarters and has four sections: drug management, dispensing practice, clinical pharmacy practice, and Chinese medicine. Each of the nine branches of the hospital has their own pharmacy division, and the head of that division is responsible for their independent practice. The Department of Pharmacy is mainly responsible for two committees: the Pharmacy and Therapeutic Committee, and the Control Drug Committee.

　　The drug management section is responsible for product selection, setting the rules for the safe use of the products and inventory control. Therefore, its major functions are to operate the Pharmacy and Therapeutic Committee and Control Drug Committee, to maintain the formulary, update drug information, maintain the internal and external websites, to execute the medication use evaluation program, to establish and follow-up drug safety indicators, to manage controlled drugs, to prepare the bidding and purchasing operation, to maintain all drug profiles, and to monitor the drug and vaccine inventory.

　　The dispensing practice section is responsible for dispensing related operation and multidisciplinary communications. The major functions are to standardize and update the outpatient dispensing practice and inpatient dispensing and distribution system, to establish the operational standards for the compounding of aseptic preparations, to establish and monitor the medication reporting and adverse drug reaction reporting system, to monitor and evaluate the process and outcomes of professional practice, to implement the policy of releasing prescriptions out to be dispensed in community pharmacies, to provide cognitive services, to design and use the drug monograph for patient counseling, to design and update information printed on the prescription bags, to prepare for hospital accreditation and to monitor and report the quality of dispensing practice.

　　The clinical pharmacy practice section is responsible for design and implement of services related to direct patient care and communication with outside customers. The major functions are to standardize the documentation and evaluation process of the cognitive services, to monitor direct patient care services (ICU, PK), to implement the medication use evaluation program and human resources management, to joint the planning of clinical pathways and discharge counseling, to plan and implement the education program for pharmacy interns and pharmacists on-job training, to design the professional development programs (P1~P4 development), to conduct OTC drug therapy education, to promote the releasing of prescriptions and monitor its outcomes, to educate about issues related to drug safety/smoking cessation/anti-abuse of drugs and to plan programs of disease management, senior care pharmacist training, service data management, and quality indicator monitoring and reporting.

　　The Chinese medicine section is responsible for the procurement and storage management of all Chinese traditional medicines. The major functions are to select and purchase high quality herbal products, to provide dispensing practice, to compound specialized preparations to meet patient needs, to monitor and report on quality, and financing management.