Career pathways in hospital pharmacy

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.