BETWEEN THE RESEARCHER and the clinical practitioner there lies a wealth of therapeutic data, the utilization of which could contribute substantially to better patient care were it effectively communicated to the clinician when and where it is needed. The emerging concept of pharmacy services in the area of clinical drug communications rests on the premise that better patient care may be achieved through a close and continuing support of rational therapeutics by professionally qualified specialists. Implicit in this concept is the recognition that there are limitations to human retention of highly specific details of drug information. Thus, there would be continued as a part of such programs the more traditional and very necessary but, nonetheless, perfunctory service of providing access to an encyclopedic reservoir of factual data such as that contained in product information files. This essentially technical operation is mentioned at the outset in order that it may be recognized, accepted as a necessary part of the services, and promptly deemphasized as a contributing factor to the development of professionally qualified drug communication specialists. The pharmacy profession, and especially the hospital pharmacists who are at the forefront of this professionalizing trend in pharmacy, must come quickly to the realization that the prevailing need is for technically competent but professionally functional individuals whose services are characterized by the application of a body of biomedical knowlege, scientific principles, and professional judgment in the selective utilization and communication of drug literature data.... Specialists Concerned with Drug Literature Other than the clinician there are at least two important professional service elements interposed between researcher and practitioner. I. The drug literature specialist (drug documentation specialist) has the principal functions of accumulating, organizing, and expediting access to the documents
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