Impact of Clinical Rounds by Academicians on Pharmacy Education and Patient Care in Pakistan

Many clinical pharmacists are involved in clinical practice along with teaching and training as clinical faculty or preceptors. The role of academic clinical pharmacist in different setting is well identified in term of patient outcomes, education, training and research in developed countries. The major responsibility of pharmacy practice or clinical pharmacy faculty includes clinical practice, research and teaching.The concept of clinical faculty is well established in medical and dental education in Pakistan. However, since Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) is still in establishing phase in Pakistan and going through various educational experiments, different issues are been faced. The major limitation remains teaching of courses of clinical pharmacy taught by non-clinical faculty. In Pakistan, not many pharmacy colleges have clinical pharmacist in their faculty or collaboration with hospital for clinical training. Many have experienced hospital pharmacists involved in teaching and research only in their institute. To over come the issue of clinical faculty, a program “Independent Clinical Pharmacists Round (ICPR)” was initiated in collaboration with a
teaching hospital. The objective of the program is to involve academician with clinical knowledge in clinical rounds to improve patient care. This is the first paper describing the involvement of academic clinical pharmacist in healthcare system in Pakistan and its impacts