This is a physician-led service for health care providers, which provides Clinical Pharmacology consultations both virtually (province-wide) and at the bedside (Calgary only).Clinical Pharmacology is a physician-based medical subspecialty that focuses on the application of pharmacological principles and methods in the real world. It is based on in-depth knowledge of human pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenomics, and toxicology.
The goals of this service include the following:
- Diagnosis and management of medication-related adverse drug events
- Decreasing adverse drug events in and out of hospital
- Decreasing the use of unnecessary medications
- Decreasing in-hospital and out of hospital drug costs through rational use of medications
- Education of physicians, residents, nurses, and allied health on safe and rational medication use
Physicians are encouraged to contact the physician on call for Clinical Pharmacology (CP) with questions about patients with any of the following issues:
- Suspected adverse drug events of any kind (e.g., cutaneous adverse reaction, new prolonged QTc on ECG, drug induced liver or renal injury, abnormal laboratory results secondary to drugs)
- Unusual or unpredicted responses to therapeutic use of medications (unexplained inefficacy or toxic effects)
- New or unusual drug interactions
- Supra or subtherapeutic drug concentrations
- Deprescribing (advice on reducing or stopping medications that are no longer needed)
- Polypharmacy / overprescribing questions
- Management of drug discontinuation syndromes (e.g., SSRI discontinuation syndrome)
- Interpretation of pharmacogenomic testing
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