Dr. Giráldez: "The hospital pharmacist brings order and quality to the system".
After receiving the Joaquín Bonal Medal, Dr. Giráldez reflected on the status and the evolution of the specialization program Hospital Pharmacy in recent years, concluding that "it brings order and quality to the system".
How is the current status of Hospital Pharmacy?
- It is in full bloom. This year, the issue number of residents is 158. When we started in 1979 there were 17. Currently, there are 104 Hospital Pharmacy services accredited for the teaching and in the beginning there were only 12. I have been fortunate not only to see this development, but also to participate in it.
Exactly what are the functions of the hospital pharmacist?
- They are very diverse and we have an increasingly wider field of action. At the Clinic we have pharmacists, in addition to department, in the ICU, in the Day Hospital, as well as being in charge of all the artificial nutrition, clinical pharmacokinetics, the presidency of the Clinical Ethics Committee (Dr. Antonio Idoate) and the presidency of the Pharmacy Committee (Dr. Giráldez), among other issues. We have a presence as a general service of the hospital and, in addition, we are growing. That is to say, where there is medicine in a hospital, today, there is a pharmacist.
At the Clinic this service has also experienced a development B .
- You only have to compare status in 1970, when the President of the University told me to come from School to the Clinic, with what is now department: a service in which 50 people work. We see this development in the Clinic on a daily basis: whenever a patient is prescribed a drug, there is a pharmacist behind it who is validating it. This represents security for the patient and for the physician.
Also the training of the clinical pharmacist has adapted to the new needs.
- As a professor of the School of Pharmacy I participated in the introduction of the subjects of Clinical Pharmacy, management and Pharmaceutical Planning, Physiopathology, among others, in the licentiate degree. Although to practice in this specialization program they need additional knowledge to the one they receive in the School during the licentiate degree. They must study Clinical Analysis, Biochemistry Clinical, Clinical Immunology, Radiopharmacy, etc. A series of specializations specific to pharmacists along with other medical or biological specialties.
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