Prior to the 1970s hospital pharmacy was a medicines supply role and the developments over the following 20 years saw a move towards ward-based pharmacy and then into the more proactive clinical pharmacy role.
Career pathways in hospital pharmacy
Prior to the 1970s
hospital pharmacy was a medicines supply role and the developments over the
following 20 years saw a move towards ward-based pharmacy and then into the
more proactive clinical pharmacy role, as discussed in Chapters 9 and 13.
Just as medical
practice moved into specialisation according to clinical areas, pharmacy
practice and the specialist pharmacist role emerged, together with advances in
pharmaceutical, clinically based expertise in these areas. The 1990s saw the
emergence of directorate pharmacists, giving clinical pharmacists the
opportunity to develop business skills and roles in budgeting and formulary
development. Career paths continued to move from clinical practitioner to
dispensary manager to chief pharmacist, leaving the ‘clinical specialist’
pharmacist with no other route to progress. In the 1990s it became more
accepted that highly skilled clinical pharmacists might work in a generalist
role, providing cover across several specialties from their senior clinical
pharmacy or clinical pharmacy manager posts. Nevertheless, progression to chief
pharmacist from both specialist and generalist higher-level roles required
practitioners to reduce the time spent in clinical work and spend time in
management and supervisory functions. Thus promotion was linked to the loss of
the direct clinical contribution to patients.
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