Clinical Pharmacology in European health care-outcome of a questionnaire study in 31 countries.

Introduction: In order to discover how well the discipline of clinical pharmacology (CP) has developed in Europe, a questionnaire survey was undertaken in 31 countries.

Methods: The senior delegate of each of the 31 countries on the Council of the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) was approached personally. This study was not an official EACPT survey.

Efforts and success world-wide in the field of clinical pharmacology. A personal review on the occasion of Folke Sjöqvist's 80th birthday.

In this personal review I describe my early expectations and experiences when I first came to work with Prof. Folke Sjöqvist as a training fellow in the early 1970s. At that time Prof.

Educating European (junior) doctors for safe prescribing.

Evidence of poor prescribing is widespread including overuse of medicines, underuse of effective medicines, avoidable adverse drug reactions and medication errors. Junior doctors who have recently graduated are responsible for much of the prescribing that takes place in hospitals and are implicated in many of the adverse medication events. Analysis of such events suggests that lack of knowledge and training underlies many of them and it has been shown that dedicated training can increase prescribing performance.

Clinical pharmacology education in Europe: undergraduate through postgraduate to continuing professional development.

Education and training in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) has undergone many changes over the last decade. Most of these changes have been driven by changes to the general medical curriculum that primarily affects undergraduates but impacts into the postgraduate and the continuing medical educations areas. Some of the changes that have taken place are described in this article and suggestions are made to make sure that the quality of education in CPT is sustained, and if possible improved.

Towards a core curriculum in clinical pharmacology for undergraduate medical students in Europe.

Undergraduate medical education has been under the spotlight for many years in Europe. In the United Kingdom the General Medical Council, which validates the final medical examination in all UK Medical Schools, has been trying to influence the curriculum for at least the last 50 years. Following their publication of the document "Tomorrow's Doctors" in 1993 many medical schools in the UK have completely changed their curriculum design away from didactic learning and towards an integrated problem-orientated or problem-based approach.