LGH Chemo Pharmacy Team

To ensure safety of the oncology patients who are more vulnerable to infections compared to non-cancer patients, LGH Chemo Dispensary started couriering oral cancer treatments to patients’ home. This not only helped the patients practice proper social distancing but also alleviated their anxiety and fear of coming to the hospital.

Providing teachings to the patients without face-to-face interaction on their complex chemotherapy regimens was not easy.(i.e. titrating dose regimen, chemo regimen involving multiple strengths of medications, cyclical treatments) To add to the challenge, LGH Chemo Clinic has been quarantined from the rest of the hospital which meant providing face-to-face teachings for in-patients was not possible either.T o overcome this obstacle, the Clinical Pharmacy Specialist organized a take-home package consisting of lab requisition and a counselling summary of the medication in patient-friendly language. The package was helpful for the patients and also great resource for non-oncology staff on the acute care wards.

LGH Chemo pharmacy team members were also heroes when it came to managing drug shortages. Tamoxifen and hydroxyurea were on long term backorder for several months last year and more than 200 patients were affected by this. Shortage of medications meant more frequent fills with smaller quantity which significantly increased the volume of refill prescriptions. Despite these challenges, pharmacy team managed to dispense those medications with minimum interruptions by making frequent follow up calls to the patients and utilizing Excel spreadsheets to keep track of inventory and each patient’s remaining supply at home.