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In March 2007, Rudy Demotte, the then Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health, launched a call for clinical pharmacy projects from general and university hospitals in Belgium. This call for proposals was in response to ongoing efforts by the Belgian Association of Hospital Pharmacists to increase funding for clinical pharmacy in the country. Proposals needed to specify the exact nature of a temporarily funded position, and on which ward or wards work would take place. Altogether, 80 proposals were received by a National Network of the Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Committee. Twenty-seven were selected for funding, which included 13 full time and 15 half time staff posts in clinical pharmacy in the areas of pain treatment, nutrition and seamless medication care in oncology, cardiology, intensive care units and geriatrics.
Positions were filled, and the first evaluations of the projects by the hospitals were sent to the ministry by the end of the year. Two further reports were required before the end of the projects on 31 December 2008.
The projects and accompanying reports should aid in demonstrating the positive impact of clinical pharmacists on patients and medical staff in a variety of areas, and hopefully serve as successful pilot projects for ongoing funding for more hospitals in Belgium. In January 2009, these 27 projects of clinical pharmacy were permanently established.
At the beginning of 2010, a new call for candidates was launched by the then Minister of Public Health, Laurette Onkelinx. More than 80 hospitals applied. Once again, 27 projects were selected and officially launched during an inaugural session in Brussels on 4 June 2010. The follow-up procedure by the National Network of the Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Committee was the same as for the initial 27 projects.
To date, 54 hospitals (26% of the number of hospitals in Belgium) have a clinical pharmacy project. Increasingly, clinical pharmacy forms part of the Belgian hospital landscape.
In September 2010, a new training programme for hospital pharmacists was established by all of the universities in Belgium. Sixty-five student posts were opened, 39 in the Flemish speaking community and 26 in the French speaking community.
The training comprises one academic part and four practical modules.
Module 1, entitled ‘Drugs supply chain’, includes the organisation and management of a hospital pharmacy, the supply chain and the following topics: control processes and quality management, and information management on both drug and clinical trials.
Module 2, entitled ‘Hospital hygiene and central sterilisation’ includes management of antibiotic therapy, organisation and management of medical devices, supply chain and similar products (including activities relating to the remit of the Medical Devices Committee).
Module 3, entitled ‘Clinical pharmacy’, covers clinical pharmacy and pharmaceutical care in at least one ward (internal medicine, geriatrics, cardiology, pneumology, psychiatry, etc) but also activities relating to the remit of the Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Committee.
Module 4, entitled ‘Production’ includes the production and/or reconstitution of chemotherapy, radiopharmaceutical drugs and other preparations, including pharmaceutical and sterile preparations. These three parts must cover, in addition to the production itself, all control and quality assurance aspects.
The duration of each module is 6 months and the four modules are taken in sequence. The academic module is spread out over 2 years, at a rate of 1 day/week to the universities. This 2 year programme replaces the previous 1 year programme and is described in a written work which can be published. Currently, there is no English language version.
Footnotes
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Competing interests None.
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Provenance and peer review Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.