CLINICAL RESEARCH BY PHARMACISTS

Most pharmaceutical scientists trained before the 1970s earned an MS or PhD degree in one of the basic pharmaceutical sciences: medicinal/pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacognosy, pharmaceutics or pharmacology. As expected, they performed research in one of those areas. The concept of clinical pharmacy arose in the 1960s and the initial programmes prepared a pharmacist to serve as a consultant to physicians for optimizing drug therapy. Unresolved questions concerning the optimal treatment emerged regularly, while clinical pharmacists with PharmD degrees applied their knowledge and skills in biomedical, pharmaceutical and clinical fields to the improvement of patient care. A void was observed by those pioneers in that it was obvious that no discipline could thrive or even survive without the discovery of new knowledge or confirmation of accepted facts.