On Monday, 31 July 2017, the Faculty of Pharmacy Universitas Airlangga held a guest lecture entitled "Building Consistent Models of Clinical Pharmacy", which was delivered by Prof. Joseph T. DiPiro. The Professor, who teaches at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, Richmond, Virginia, the United States is known for his works in clinical parmacy. Among his well-known works are Concepts in Clinical Pharmacokinetics and Encyclopedia of Clinical Pharmacy (as editor).
The guest lecture was attended by about 250 scholars from various institutions, including guests from Universitas Widya Mandala, Universitas Hang Tuah, Universitas Surabaya, Universitas Airlangga Hospital, and Dr. Soetomo General Hospital, as well as students from the undergraduate, professional, graduate, and doctoral program students along with lecturers of the Faculty of Pharmacy UNAIR.
Some of Prof. DiPiro's achievements include:
- President of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and Past Chair of the Council of Deans.
- President of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy
- Recipient of the AACP Robert K. Chalmers Distinguished EducatorAward", 2002.
- Recipient of the Russell R. Mier Literature Award and the Education Award from the ACCP.
- Recipient of the National Rho Chi Distinguished Lecturer, 2013.
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
During his presentation, Prof. DiPiro, who previously presented at the Asian Conference of Clinical Pharmacy 2013 in Jogjakarta, stressed the need for a "Consistent Clinical Practice Model", which is characterized by efforts to:
- assure that patients are receiving the highest quality of care
- achieve consistency of practice across the profession
- reduce uncertainty among other health professionals about the role of pharmacists and facilitate pharmacists working in health care teams
- assist health care administrators and managers to understand what pharmacists do.
Prof. DiPiro also mentioned several challenges in building this Consistent Clinical Practice Model, including: regulations that limit practice, training and skill of the pharmacists, resistance to new practice models, the physical structure of the pharmacy, differences from pharmaceutical education, and current practice model which is centered around products and patients. "Clinical pharmacists need to develop consistent clinical practice models, so that patients and other health care practitioners know what to expect from pharmacists," he argued.
