The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7256 p15
5 July 2003

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

Making the elite pharmacists of today the stars of tomorrow

The winners of the Pharmaceutical Care Awards 2002 were presented with their awards at a dinner held at the Savoy Hotel in London on 27 June. The awards, organised by The Journal and sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, were presented by Professor Martin Kendall. Finalists presented their work at a conference held in the afternoon before the dinner

Professor Martin Kendall, professor of clinical pharmacology, University of Birmingham, gave the keynote address at this year's Pharmaceutical Care Awards conference.

"I wonder how many doctors and people out there have any idea about what we have heard this afternoon," he said. Professor Kendall hoped that he could provoke pharmacists to tell the world what they are doing.

In particular, he examined four areas: drug safety, drug information, disease management and prescribing.

The potential that community pharmacists have to find out about the safety of drugs is huge, he said. "This is either grossly under-exposed or you're keeping quiet about it. Just think what a network of community pharmacists could provide: information that no one else could."

Although an increase in the number of yellow card reports by pharmacists had been seen in the past year (see p5), the rate of reporting could still be improved. Statistics from the Adverse Drug Reaction On-line Information Tracking (ADROIT) database drew attention to the COX-2 inhibitors. It showed that there had been 217 reports of ADRs to celecoxib and 203 reports to rofecoxib, placing them in position two and three of the ADR "top 10". A third COX-2 inhibitor was in 10th place. However, community pharmacists had made only 12 of these reports about rofecoxib and 10 about celecoxib. "The challenge is to do something about this," said Professor Kendall.

Between 6 and 8 per cent of all hospital admissions are a result of adverse drug reactions. "If one hospital in 100 monitored all admissions for one month in 12, we could have a superb database on the impact of ADRs on mortality, morbidity, bed occupance and finance," he said. "If pharmacists acted cohesively as a group then they could find this information and reduce the enormous morbidity and mortality associated with drugs."

What pharmacists are doing in the field of drug information is wonderful, Professor Kendall said. But he questioned whether enough is being done for children. One idea was the production of a specific British National Formulary for Children.

Turning to disease management, Professor Kendall said that great things are happening, some of which were described by the winners of this year's Pharmaceutical Care Awards. "But these are local initiatives, reported only to other pharmacists." He asked if the world knew about the initiatives, and whether they could be extended nationwide.

Professor Kendall also wondered if anyone was defining a role for pharmacists in diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy and asthma. "The Department of Health is making a big effort with nurses," he noted.

He asked where pharmacists fit into the overall picture of expanding the health professionals who can prescribe. For instance, how the different prescribers would know what the others are doing, who would take responsibility and what happened if prescribers stop each other's drugs. "Aren't pharmacists the people who should be coming up with the ideas," he asked. Furthermore, he wondered if the Department of Health is taking pharmacist prescribing seriously enough.

However, Professor Kendall concluded positively: "This is a great day for pharmacy: think big."