IMU Alumnus Shares about Venous Thromboembolism

14 October 2014 – 45 people attended a talk entitled ‘Prevention and Treatment of Venous Thromboembolism’ at the Auditorium at International Medical University (IMU)’s Bukit Jalil Campus. The talk is a collaboration between IMU School of Pharmacy,the Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society – Young Pharmacist Chapter (MPS-YPC) and IMU Alumni. The speaker for this talk, which was held in conjunction with the BPharm 10th Anniversary, is Amy Chin Shin Chee, an IMU Alumnus. Amy Chin graduated in 2007 with a Master of Pharmacy from University of Strathclyde, having studied the initial two and a half years in IMU. She is a registered pharmacist who has been serving the government hospital for 6 years. She first worked in a district hospital (Semporna) during the first year of FRP, then worked as a paediatric and female medical ward pharmacist in Tawau Hospital and later Kajang Hospital after her completion of Master programme. She pursued her Master study in Clinical Pharmacy at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

At this talk, Amy shared her expertise in thromboembolism management in clinical situation. She spoke about her clinical experiences in the management of venous thromboembolism as an ICU pharmacist based on the latest Malaysian guideline. She also spoke about the first Clinical Practice Guideline on Venous Thromboembolism released by the Ministry of Health in August 2013 to provide evidence-based guidance in the management of this condition. She covered the risk prediction tool, diagnosis and investigation, prevention and management of the disease, monitoring treatment efficacy and safety, management in special population and unusual sites of venous thromboembolism, perioperative management and finally the establishment of MTAC warfarin.  Real life clinical cases were also presented at the talk.

Before the talk ended, there is a Question and Answer session. During this session, a few participants took the opportunity to clear their doubts. As an IMU alumnus, Amy is glad to be back to IMU again to share her experiences and she encourages MPS Young Pharmacist Chapter to organise more talks so that practising pharmacists or future pharmacists may gain more knowledge and keep themselves updated. One of the participants, an IMU student thinks that this talk is beneficial in guiding her to select suitable anticoagulant in treating venous thromboembolism among special populations and also differentiating the dosage and duration of the drug treatment for both prevention and management of venous thromboembolism. She was glad that she attended the talk as she learned a lot through this talk.