The Pharmaceutical Care Awards, now in their ninth year, have again been successful in discovering important work being done by enterprising pharmacists (see pp17-25). Strong themes this year were pharmacist prescribing, particularly related to emergency contraception and discharge medication, and continuity of care between hospitals and the community. Other key topics were medication use in mental illness, treatment of asthma, pharmacist led medication review, assisting those with learning difficulties and treatment of lice infestation.
Many of the entries were multidisciplinary, reflecting an awareness that pharmaceutical care cannot be undertaken in professional isolation. It is also a practice that involves the patient or clients, so it is apposite to record that, for the first time, service users who had helped in the development of one of the projects were present. We were pleased that they were there.
We were also pleased that Professor Douglas Hepler, a leading advocate of pharmaceutical care, was the principal guest and presented the awards on our behalf. Professor Hepler's mastery of the field enabled him to draw strong themes from the entries, all of which he had read either in full or in abstract form. And in doing so he added value to the whole process in a way that others would have found difficult to achieve.
One key point that he made was that, with the emphasis now being placed on clinical governance, the likelihood of somebody realising that community pharmacists were a necessity in the management of medicines was high. The worry was no longer whether it would be realised how important community pharmacists were, but whether they would be ready when the call came.
Clearly then, the message for pharmacists is to seek out the opportunities and to be ready. To do this, pharmacists will have to find out all they can about pharmaceutical care/medicines management, and go about acquiring the necessary skills. They can do much by themselves, but a lot still has to be done by educational and professional institutions. They too must be ready. Experience world-wide shows that pharmaceutical care requires an infrastructure providing peer review and expert support.
Another point made by Professor Hepler was that, in his opinion, all of the entrants for the Pharmaceutical Care Awards were winners. The projects, he said, were difficult to do, and took a great deal of dedication. We would echo that and add our thanks to the entrants. Without them there would be no competition. And without the competition, one of the key means of discovering and recognising professional achievement would be lost. Not everyone can win and those who do not do so should not be dispirited.
The Pharmaceutical Care Awards are co-sponsored by The Pharmaceutical Journal and Glaxo Wellcome UK Ltd. The company has supported the awards from their inception, and for this we could not be more grateful.