Sayo Suzuki: "Clinical Pharmacy" and the "Social Responsibility of Pharmacy"

Clinical pharmacy was born in the United States in the 1960s as a discipline that connects medical sciences and healthcare with pharmacy, aiming for better medical care. Its importance has increased along with the development of medical sciences and the rise of patient-oriented care.

In Japan, the prototype of the separation of prescribing and dispensing—where doctors diagnose and prescribe, and pharmacists dispense and administer medication—was established during the Meiji era. In the past, I feel there were times when there were barriers between the roles of national universities, which primarily focused on training researchers, and private universities, which focused on producing pharmacists. However, I feel that clinical pharmacy has paved the way for integration by removing the barriers between medical sciences and pharmacy, and between (basic) research and clinical practice.

Clinical pharmacy aims not only to realize effective and safe drug treatments but also to research and solve a wide range of issues in the medical field, such as social and public health, ethical issues, and healthcare professional education, and to return those results to actual clinical practice. The methodologies for solving these issues span many fields. The pharmacy education curriculum for the six-year pharmacy course (described later) is packed with a wide range of academic fields, including physics and chemistry, life sciences, Pharmacology (Division of), pharmacokinetics, pharmaceutics, Division of Pharmacotherapeutics, data science, clinical sciences, and ethics. This serves as a foundation for pharmacists and pharmacy graduates to take a multifaceted approach to various issues.

The Faculty of Pharmacy has a six-year program (Department of Pharmacy) to train highly qualified pharmacists, and a four-year program (Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences) to train human resources who will be active in various fields such as research and development rather than becoming pharmacists. The "Pharmacists' Code of Ethics" clearly states that "pharmacists" who graduate from the six-year program and pass the national examination have a responsibility to play an important role in drug discovery, the supply of pharmaceuticals, clinical practice at medical institutions, pharmaceutical affairs and public health, and health sciences in general, contributing to the development of medical sciences and pharmacy.

In fact, facing the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists and pharmacy graduates worked hard and contributed at the forefront of every field, from pharmaceutical companies involved in the discovery of vaccines and therapeutic drugs to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare responsible for pharmaceutical administration, public institutions such as the PMDA (Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency) and the National Institute of Health Sciences, and responses in clinical settings. Graduates of our Faculty of Pharmacy and Graduate School have also entered a wide range of fields, including medical institutions, various companies such as pharmaceuticals, public institutions, and Research Centers and Institutes such as universities, utilizing their expertise in a wide range of social sectors.

I would like to convey that pharmacists and pharmacy graduates play an indispensable role in the lives and welfare of the public in all situations related to medicine and health.