For the FAA’s First Clinical Pharmacist, Family is the Best Medicine
Dr. Vinh Kieu relies on her parents’ life lessons to benefit Aerospace Medicine.
Dr. Vinh “Vickie” Kieu says her family gave her perspectives that make her successful in the FAA’s Office of Aerospace Medicine. Her work as a clinical pharmacist helps keep aviation safety professionals operating safely and at their best. “My parents are both immigrants from Vietnam, and my older sister was born there,” said Dr. Kieu. “They were ‘boat people’ who fled right after the Vietnam War, selling off their valuables and taking only what they could carry.” After the arduous and dangerous journey to a refugee camp in the Philippines, Kieu’s parents ultimately made it to the United States, where she was born. They were separated from many of her uncles and aunts, who ended up living throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe.
“My parents were both successful in Vietnam.” Kieu tells us. “My dad was an architect, and my mom was a teacher and principal. They came to a country where they didn’t know the language nor the culture, with three kids in tow, but they handled the curveballs life threw at them.” Kieu’s father washed dishes and did other odd jobs to get her and her siblings by while both her parents learned English, and he eventually re-earned his degree. “All the while, he would take us on vacations so we could see the country we didn’t know much about yet.
Kieu says that her parents taught her how to be resourceful. “We grew up poor, but never knew it. To me and my siblings, we were just like any of our friends. My parents told us ‘Don’t have fear, jump in and adapt. Life will throw you curveballs, but you’ve got to be willing to adapt.’”
These lessons in adaptability and resourcefulness have given Dr. Kieu the strength and skills to advance in her career at the FAA. “When most people think of pharmacists, they think of dispensing pharmacists in community pharmacies,” explained Dr. Kieu. “But what a lot of people don’t understand is that pharmacists work in all aspects of medicine, in inpatient or outpatient settings, poison control centers — even NASA has their own pharmacists.”
When Kieu was hired as the first clinical pharmacist at the FAA, she took her previous clinical experiences at hospitals, community pharmacies, and free clinics and used them to evolve the position. “Having full understanding of medication side effects is crucial because if someone is flying a plane they can’t pull over if they are dizzy, so knowing what can happen before they step into the cockpit is very important.” In this way, Kieu has helped to make the FAA’s Office of Aerospace Medicine more interdisciplinary.
Aviation professionals need to be at peak physical and mental health in order to execute their roles safely and effectively. Dr. Kieu assists them with this through applying her expertise and insight. “One of my primary roles is to review the safety aspects of medications that are used by pilots and air traffic controller specialists. I keep track of and update our policies based on the latest information from the FDA, and adapt the FAA’s policies to accommodate aviation’s unique environment.” Dr. Kieu has helped advance the FAA’s approach to medication review alongside the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, making the review more efficient and providing the flight surgeons medication and COVID-19 vaccine-related answers.
Outside of the FAA, Dr. Kieu also volunteers at free clinics and with her county health department’s Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), where she is humbled to give back to the community that helped her family’s start in America. “I love the interaction with patients,” she said. “One of the things I like about the art of medicine is that you have to consider that every person lives life differently. Part of the decision process as a pharmacist is to know the barriers people face and what makes them tick and coming up with a plan that best suits their life. It’s about making medication less of a burden for them.”
Dr. Kieu credits her success to her parents’ experiences and life lessons. “When my parents escaped Vietnam, they could only take what they could carry,” she noted. “They taught us to never be wasteful and to never take anything for granted. They also taught us to not be afraid of exposing ourselves to new experiences and new ways of doing things. These are all lessons I use in my job because being adaptable is critical to being a pharmacist.”
For Dr. Kieu, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is a chance to not only celebrate Asian cultures, but also to remember her parents’ sacrifices combined with the overwhelming support that greeted them the moment they stepped foot in the U.S. Now in her role as a civil servant, she and her husband — an active duty physician whose parents were also Vietnamese immigrants — are committed to a career of service to others. “We want to show our children that our family would not have been successful without others opening their hearts to help and support our parents when it was needed the most.”
