Clinical pharmacology in the last decade.

Introduction Clinical pharmacology in the United Kingdom can be said to have come of age in the 1970s. Most teaching hospitals have departments of clinical pharmacology, and several universities have separated it from medicine in the final graduating examination so that medical students have to pass in clinical pharmacology in order to graduate. It is a recognized clinical speciality within the National Health Service, and the Joint Committee for Higher Medical Training of the Royal College of Physicians has a Specialist Advisory Committee in Clinical Pharmacology which has laid down a programme of higher training in the subject comparable to training programmes in other medical specialities and has approved posts in particular departments for such training. An encouraging number of physicians have already been accredited in clinical pharmacology after going through this training programme. A critical development in the subject has been the recognition that clinical pharmacology has an important role in general medicine and patient care, not only in the teaching hospital (Wood, Turner and Vere, 1980), but also in district general hospitals (Editorial, 1978), and several appointments have been made to such hospitals of general physicians with an interest in clinical pharmacology. It is hoped that these appointments will demonstrate the value of the speciality in the NHS regions and districts and that more will be made within the next decade. Trainees in clinical pharmacology are not limited to such posts, however, and many physicians who have spent several years in departments of clinical pharmacology are now in consultant posts in other specialities such as gastroenterology, cardiology, chest medicine, neurology and rheumatology, to which they are able to bring the experience of a scientific training in drug evaluation and use.