Why join the European Society for Clinical Pharmacy?

Membership of the ESCP is open to anyone with an interest in clinical pharmacy – including clinical pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, academics and students. “But also, we would welcome non-pharmacy professionals, patients – anyone who’s got an interest in really advancing clinical pharmacy”, says Professor Stewart. “It’s really important [to remember that] as a pharmacy team we deliver clinical pharmacy – it’s not just clinical pharmacists”, he emphasises.

The organisation offers a range of activities and benefits including:

• Monthly webinars based on members’ needs
• An annual two-day International Workshop on a therapeutic topic
• An annual three-day International Symposium
• Free access to the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and its sister journal, Drug and Therapy Perspectives
• Special Interest Groups
• Best Practice papers
• ESCP research grants

How ESCP special interest groups forge worldwide links

ESCP has undertaken a number of key developments in recent years, including the introduction of regular webinars and a major overhaul of its special interest groups.

“Historically, we were known for our events, which are world-leading events, but we wanted to back that up with a lot more benefits and offerings for our members and not just be known for these two annual events”, says Professor Stewart.  This led to a number of initiatives – one of which was a re-appraisal of the special interest groups and the formation of new groups.  The first of these is a Deprescribing Special Interest Group. “We are partnering with some of the big, international deprescribing groups, particularly in Canada and Australia around that” he says. Other new groups include a mental health group and a young members’ group.

Building best practice in clinical pharmacy

ESCP recognises that the translation of academic evidence into day-to-day practice is an important step in the development of clinical pharmacy services – and ESCP Best Practice papers are designed to support this process.  Best practice papers do not follow the conventional format for research papers because they are intended to describe innovations in practice. Authors are expected to describe many of the practical details of implementation including the facilitators and barriers, how barriers were overcome and how the impact of the initiative was evaluated, Professor Stewart explains. So far at least 10 Best Practice papers have been published, he adds.

How the Oath to Society underpins clinical pharmacy practice

The Oath to Society, jointly developed by ESCP and EAHP, underpins clinical pharmacy services and highlights pharmacists’ work to those outside the profession. This articulates, on one page, what and how pharmacists vow to serve society, explains Professor Stewart. It has been presented to a multi-disciplinary audience at the European Parliament in Brussels – where it garnered considerable support from medicine, nursing, other allied health professions and patient groups, he says.

ESCP symposium 2023

The ESCP annual symposium will be held this year in Aberdeen, Scotland 31^st October -2^nd November.  It will offer a busy programme of plenary sessions, workshops and oral communications. Some of the highlights will be:

• A keynote address by Professor Allison Strath, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer at the Scottish government
• A plenary lecture by Claire Steele, President, Association of Pharmacy Technicians United Kingdom on ‘Collaborative working within the clinical pharmacy team’
• A workshop on sustainable prescribing to reduce environmental pollution from medicines

About Derek Stewart

Derek Stewart PgCert, BSc (1^st), MSc, PhD, FRPharmS, FFRPS is Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Practice, Qatar University. He is also visiting professor at Robert Gordon University in Scotland and at the Royal College of surgeons of Ireland. In addition, he is President of the European Society of clinical Pharmacy and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Read and watch the full series on our website or on YouTube.

ESCP – serving members’ needs

Clinical pharmacy practice varies very considerably from country to country and so trying to meet the different needs is a constant challenge for ESCP.  It’s “about how do we take best practice in terms of the actual practice, self-education and research and spread that – so we try and do that through our events, our webinars and reaching out to our members”, says Professor Stewart.  Two pieces of work in recent years have helped here. First, the Education Committee undertook a scoping project on clinical pharmacy education across Europe looking at undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development levels. “That highlighted – and reinforced – the huge continuum from ….. very advanced practice to countries where there was really very, very little clinical pharmacy”, he says. Second, ESCP is working with national clinical pharmacy societies to provide support.  For example, a clinical pharmacy society has recently been established in Nepal and it has approached ESCP for help.

In another initiative ESCP looked into the research aspirations of its members. “We’ve translated that into a series of ‘how-to’ papers ….. ‘how to write an abstract, ‘how to write a paper’ ‘how to cite’, ‘how to increase your chance of getting research funding’. We’ve just published that as a paper in IJCP”, says Professor Stewart.

In addition, when planning event such as the annual symposium it is important to ensure that the programme caters for all levels of experience and interest, he notes.

The Oath to Society

A joint initiative by the ESCP and the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) has resulted in the development of the Oath to Society. This articulates, on one page, what and how pharmacists vow to serve society. “So, it’s about treating people equally, fairly, with respect, [having] high ethical standards of practice, but then some of the specific bits around what hospital pharmacists [and] clinical pharmacists in all settings would do around, maybe, evidence-based care and promoting safe, effective, cost-effective use of medicines, looking at disease management and things like that”, explains Professor Stewart.  The document has now been presented twice to the European Parliament in Brussels. It was presented to a multi-disciplinary audience and gained a lot of support from medicine, nursing, other allied health professions and patient groups, he says. Moreover, it has now been translated into every European language and some others including Chinese and Urdu, he adds. “It’s a really important document – really to highlight to people beyond pharmacy how we are serving society”, he concludes.

ESCP Symposium 2023

The ESCP annual symposium will be held this year in Aberdeen, Scotland 31^st October -2^nd November.  A Masterclass on ‘Making sense of Literature – how to choose and conduct the correct review for your research question?’ will be held the day before the symposium. This will include discussion of how artificial intelligence should properly be integrated into the process of literature review, notes Professor Stewart.

The symposium itself offers a busy programme of plenary sessions, workshops and oral communications. Some of the highlights will be:

• A keynote address by Professor Allison Strath, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer at the Scottish government
• A plenary lecture by Claire Steele, President, Association of Pharmacy Technicians United Kingdom on ‘Collaborative working within the clinical pharmacy team’
• A workshop on sustainable prescribing to reduce environmental pollution from medicines

About Derek Stewart

Derek Stewart PgCert, BSc (1^st), MSc, PhD, FRPharmS, FFRPS is Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Practice, Qatar University. He is also visiting professor at Robert Gordon University in Scotland and at the Royal College of surgeons of Ireland. In addition, he is President of the European Society of clinical Pharmacy and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Read and watch the full series on our website or on YouTube.

ESCP President Derek Stewart explains how Best Practice papers are produced, starting by calling for abstracts of proposed papers from interested parties. After independent review “the best ones are then invited to submit full papers to IJCP [the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy]. Now there’s a specific structure of that paper – so it’s not a normal research paper because here we’re looking for innovations in practice – really about how do you take the evidence from the literature, the policies. ….  the clinical guidelines – how do you translate that into an innovation in practice? …. So, that’s what we’re looking at in the paper – it’s not an ‘introduction, method, results, discussion’, traditional paper.”  Importantly, authors are asked to explain many of the practical details of implementation including the facilitators and barriers, how barriers were overcome and how the impact of the initiative was evaluated.

So far at least 10 Best Practice papers have been published. “Our very first one was a big interprofessional network on Parkinson’s disease in Germany which had no Pharmacy input. So this best practice paper was about how they pulled the pharmacy input and actually showed ….. the difference it could make.  So, had that been submitted as a traditional research paper it would not have had the robustness or rigor [required] as an academic piece of work but in terms of best practice it was really important. The next one was looking at advanced general practice pharmacists – pharmacists working a very high level within GP practices – and how they developed simulated teaching for that development.  ……. Then, another really interesting example that leads on from the last one is looking in the Netherlands at how they have developed pharmacists working in general practices”, says Professor Stewart. These three examples illustrate the three fundamental pillars of the ESCP – practice, education and research, he adds.

The most recent Best Practice paper deals with the implementation of a seven-day, 24-hour clinical pharmacy service in a big, UK teaching hospital. “To me, as President but also Editor, these are extremely important pieces of work because they show the real-life implementation of the research. We need the research to give us the evidence base but we need to think how does it make a difference in practice”, comments Professor Stewart.

Strategic planning and tackling diversity

“There’s a huge diversity even across Europe in terms of clinical Pharmacy education [and] clinical Pharmacy practice” and tackling these differences is a large part of the raison d’être for the ESCP, acknowledges Professor Stewart.

Research priorities

The Research Committee is just about to finish the piloting of a questionnaire for a survey that will go to members asking them to identify research priorities. Pulling the information together in this way could be beneficial. “If you’ve got people in lots of different countries doing similar pieces of work – and we see it when our abstracts come through for our events – we need to somehow link those people better together. So, what changes from being 10 small pieces of research becomes one big impactful piece of research. There’s then maybe a chance to get research funding for that – not through ESCP – but through other organizations….. So, I think ….there’s a piece of work for us to do around almost scoping those abstracts – I think actually we can link these people together around that or link people who’ve got a bit more expertise in areas with the people who’ve got less expertise in those areas” explains Professor Stewart.

About Derek Stewart

Derek Stewart PgCert, BSc (1^st), MSc, PhD, FRPharmS, FFRPS is Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Practice, Qatar University. He is also visiting professor at Robert Gordon University in Scotland and at the Royal College of surgeons of Ireland. In addition, he is President of the European Society of clinical Pharmacy and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Read and watch the full series on our website or on YouTube.

“Historically, we were known for our events, which are world-leading events, but we wanted to back that up with a lot more benefits and offerings for our members and not just be known for these two annual events”, says Professor Stewart. With this in mind, a series of changes has been made.

The communication strategy has been critical for the organisation’s development and recently the newsletter has been updated and refreshed. This is now sent not only to members but also to non-members who have attended an ESCP in recent years. The organisation is also very active on social media with regular posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The Covid-19 pandemic prompted some important changes. “We put our two main yearly events online and then brought in a series of webinars to almost supplement that”, says Professor Stewart

There was also a major review of Special Interest Groups. “We paused them ….. we felt that we were maybe too much ‘top-down’, that it was the committee members deciding special interest groups and not our rank members so we’ve changed that and have relaunched those. …. One really key thing that we’re proud of is our Young Members Special Interest Group which is really there to support developing practice. It’s not really defined in terms of age – anybody can join it – but it’s looking at those early career practitioners and how we support those”, he says.

Another important initiative is forging links with national clinical pharmacy societies and signing off memoranda of understanding about how the organisations can work together and support each other. “We offer member discounts for those societies that sign one of these agreements with us, so we’re actually reaching out not just at an individual level but thinking about how to support societies [so that] they support us as well”, explains Professor Stewart.

Special Interest Groups

The overhaul of special interest groups has resulted in a major change of thinking about what they are for and how they operate. After due consideration by the General Committee and the Special Interest Group Council a blueprint or template was developed that set out how to set up, run and even dissolve a special interest group. The latter was important because “a special interest group might be developed for a particular issue and once the members feel that they’ve developed everything within that issue, it doesn’t need to continue”, he says.

The first of the new groups is a Deprescribing Special Interest Group. “We are partnering with some of the big, international deprescribing groups, particularly in Canada and Australia around that” he adds.

“The next one that come along was mental health – and it’s operating in a very different way. They’ve just done a piece of work which is being submitted to the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy which is scoping clinical pharmacy mental health …. structures and processes [in several] countries within Europe”, explains Professor Stewart.

The young members’ special interest group (Young ESCP) plans to serve the needs of clinical pharmacists at an early stage in their careers and could build on some of the work already done by ESCP. “In the past few years, we’ve delivered some webinars for early career people …… in terms of research methods, basic statistics, how do you write a research question? how do you actually get going?…… Sometimes …. it’s a bit daunting – you see these really high-functioning clinical people and you think, ‘How do I get to that to that level?’ “, he says.

ESCP special interest groups are only open to member of ESCP. Details of the groups and how to join them are available on the ESCP website.

About Derek Stewart

Derek Stewart PgCert, BSc (1^st), MSc, PhD, FRPharmS, FFRPS is Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Practice, Qatar University. He is also visiting professor at Robert Gordon University in Scotland and at the Royal College of surgeons of Ireland. In addition, he is President of the European Society of clinical Pharmacy and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Read and watch the full series on our website or on YouTube.

As President of the ESCP Professor Stewart leads the General Committee which, supported by four linked operational committees, is responsible for the strategic development of the organisation. Before being elected President in 2020, he served as chairman of the research committee for several years. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Membership of the ESCP is open to anyone with an interest in clinical pharmacy – including clinical pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, academics and students. “But also, we would welcome non-pharmacy professionals, patients – anyone who’s got an interest in really advancing clinical pharmacy”, says Professor Stewart. “It’s really important [to remember that] as a pharmacy team we deliver clinical pharmacy – it’s not just clinical pharmacists”, he emphasises.

Membership of the ESCP offers the opportunity to become part of a dynamic, powerful society dedicated to harnessing the developments in clinical pharmacy worldwide, explains Professor Stewart. Although the name is ‘European Society’, it really is a global society that enables members at all stages of professional development to network and share expertise.

The organisation offers a range of activities and benefits including:

• Monthly webinars based on members’ needs
• An annual two-day International Workshop on a therapeutic topic
• An annual three-day International Symposium
• Free access to the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and its sister journal, Drug and Therapy Perspectives
• Special Interest Groups
• Best Practice papers
• ESCP research grants

About Derek Stewart

Derek Stewart PgCert, BSc (1^st), MSc, PhD, FRPharmS, FFRPS is Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Practice, Qatar University. He is also visiting professor at Robert Gordon University in Scotland and at the Royal College of surgeons of Ireland. In addition, he is President of the European Society of clinical Pharmacy and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy.

Read and watch the full series on our website or on YouTube.