Clinical Pharmacologist/PhD student
Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Medicine, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Dr Veshni Pillay-Fuentes Lorente is a Clinical Pharmacologist and currently a PhD candidate at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa. She completed her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) at Walter Sisulu University, South Africa in 2010. Afterwards she proceeded to work in the public sector hospitals in South Africa from 2011 to 2022. During this time she pursued a 2-year post-graduate diploma in Medicines Development at Stellenbosch University. Subsequently she completed a 4-year specialization training in Clinical Pharmacology at Tygerberg Hospital/Stellenbosch University. During this time she also completed a Masters of Medicine in Clinical Pharmacology. Veshni is now a fellow of the College of Clinical Pharmacologists of South Africa where she also serves as a council member. During her career she has been part of drugs and therapeutics committees, antimicrobial stewardship committees and ethics research committees. She is actively involved in lecturing, supervising, and mentoring undergraduate and post-graduate students at Stellenbosch University. Her current career interest is dose optimisation in understudied populations such as paediatrics, pregnancy and the critically ill. Her current PhD work includes the evaluation of colistin pharmacokinetics in paediatric patients < 2 years and adult critically ill patients. Her new endeavour is to enter the pharmacometrics space so that she can bring this innovative tool closer to the patient bedside to aid more informed dosing practices locally, nationally and to other African countries.