Introduction To Clinical Pharmacy

Introduction of Clinical pharmacy

Clinical Pharmacy is a health science related discipline in which pharmacist provides care to the patient that optimizes medication therapy and promotes health, wellness, and disease prevention. The clinical pharmacy practice comprises the philosophy of pharmaceutical care; it merges a caring orientation with specialized therapeutic knowledge, experience, and judgment for the purpose of ensuring optimal patient outcomes and prevention of disease. As a discipline, clinical pharmacy also has a responsibility to the generation of new knowledge that enhance health care and quality of life.(1)

Clinical Pharmacy includes all the services performed by pharmacists practicing in hospitals, community

This new generation of pharmacists is patient rather than drug product oriented. The discipline arose out of dissatisfaction with old practice norms and the pressing need for a health professional with a comprehensive knowledge of the therapeutic use of drugs. The clinical pharmacy movement began at the University of Michigan in the early 1960s, but much of the pioneering work was done by David Burkholder, Paul Parker, and Charles Walton at the University of Kentucky in the latter part of the 1960s.

Clinical pharmacy services have emerged as a significant element of hospital pharmacy activity over the past thirty years in the UK. This emergence has reflected similar changes worldwide, especially in North America, Australia and New Zealand. In Europe, the balance of individual patient care services (delivered on wards or clinics) and general clinical support services from a central pharmacy varies because of national differences in the numbers of hospital pharmacists. The roles in individual patient care are changing as the educational formation of the pharmacist as a clinical practitioner develops internationally through changes in university

In the UK, hospital pharmacists saw themselves as drug information advisers emerging from pharmacy-based drug information centers. It was not until after more than ten years of describing themselves as ‘ward pharmacists’ that UK pharmacist felt comfortable adopting the USA term ‘clinical pharmacists’ with the formation of the UK Clinical Pharmacy Association. This early reticence was a symptom of the lack of clinical orientation during the pre-graduate education; which is still evident in the UK graduate today. The lack of clinical orientation is a continuing barrier to professional advancement in Europe, where in many countries pharmacy education remains dominated by a traditional emphasis on molecular science that is often poorly linked to clinical application. Gradually, the more progressive Schools of Pharmacy are negotiating a new combination of laboratory science and clinical science, as a structured teaching of clinical practice is becoming