Pharmacoprudence defined

In keeping with my adopted tradition of comparing clinical pharmacy to the legal profession I have coined and now introduce the term “pharmacoprudence” into the lexicon of healthcare. Akin to the term “jurisprudence” as for when the affairs of the law are concerned. Pharmacoprudence may be defined in simple terms as the operation of systems for the rational utilization of drugs as well as nonpharmacological interventions in the delivery of healthcare.

Advocacy for the use of evidence-based and economical methods in healthcare is now prevalent round the world. The concept of rational use of drugs and other medical resources has been around for many years although this very term (pharmacoprudence) has not been used before to describe it. Now we are making an attempt to establish pharmacoprudence as an identified and important aspect of healthcare delivery.

As would be discussed later pharmacoprudence is the subject matter of the clinical pharmacy profession. Therefore although these two terms are not interchangeable the clinical pharmacist may so succinctly describe his/her function or role in healthcare as that of pharmacoprudence. This embodies among other things the following activities.

• Initiation and participation in locally-relevant clinical trials or research
• Surveillance of the global medical scholarly literature and review of research findings
• Clinical auditing on both patient and population-wide basis
• Training and information service to the medical community