The evolution of pharmacy practice research—Part II: Time to join the rest of the world

Pharmacy is a science-based degree, pharmacists are the scientists in the High Street, pharmacists are the experts in medicines. These phrases are ones with which, as pharmacists, we are all familiar and of which we should be proud. Pharmacists are involved in the development of new medicines, making existing medicines better and making sure that the medicines we have are used well. This continuum of the input of pharmacists into the development and use of medicines, the mainstay of maintaining health in today’s 21st century, is well documented in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain’s 2014 publication New Medicines, Better Medicines, Better Use of Medicines1 and Canada’s Blueprint for Pharmacy.2 For unless we continue to use our scientific knowledge to underpin these 3 tenets of health care, then our central role will diminish in the future. One of the important things that these documents has done was to include what we often refer to as “pharmacy practice research” as part of the continuum of science that underpins our practice. But in fact, the pharmacy practice research components could also have been referred to using more universally recognized terms such as clinical sciences, applied health sciences or health services research