 |
| |
|
Clinical Pharmacology is the medical speciality which assesses the effects of drugs on humans, both on the general population and on specific subgroups and individual patients. This assessment is centred on the relation between therapeutic effects (benefits), undesirable effects (risks) and the cost of therapy, and it includes efficacy, safety, effectiveness and efficiency. The know-how and methods used are based on Medicine, Pharmacology and Epidemiology.
In 1970, the WHO published its technical report 446 entitled “Clinical Pharmacology. Scope, Organization, Training”, which recommends the development of the speciality as a discipline integrated in health systems, and defines, among others, the following functions: to improve patient care promoting a more effective and safer use of medicinal products, increase knowledge by means of research, transmit such knowledge through teaching and promote services such as information about medicinal products, drug analyses, drug abuse monitoring and study design consultancy. |
| |
 |
| |
Clinical Pharmacology in Spain.
In Spain, Clinical Pharmacology was recognised as a medical speciality in 1978 (RD 2015/78), creating the National Commission of the Speciality which established a 3-year training programme. However, what was then the Marqués de Valdecilla National Medical Centre, the first Clinical Pharmacology hospital department, had already been created in 1974 .
The General Health Act (Organic Law 14/1986) and the Medicinal products Act (Law 25/1990) defined the framework for Clinical Pharmacology activities, both in hospitals and in primary care. Clinical pharmacologists therefore work in hospitals, primary healthcare centres, universities, the administration, the pharmaceutical industry and other institutions.
Access to the speciality is through the resident intern physician system, with a 4-year training period being established from 1984 on (RD 127/84), which is still in force. The competences of specialists in clinical pharmacology and their training objectives and methods are described in full in the programme for specialist training which was altered and approved by the National Commission of the Speciality in March, 2003.
In 2002, the Spanish Clinical Pharmacology Society published the clinical pharmacology resident's manual, with the collaboration of specialists and residents from all accredited hospital Clinical Pharmacology departments, primary healthcare centres, the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices, medical schools and pharmaceutical laboratories. An excellent aid, nearly six hundred pages long, the manual defines the scope of the speciality. |
|
|
