Chair(s)

Introduction

The more that pharmacists can demonstrate how they can address the shortfall in doctors’ pharmaceutical knowledge, the greater the role they can play in clinical practice. Physicians prescribe drugs to treat disease and are familiar with the medicines used within their specialties. Conversely, surgeons tend to be more interested in, and focus on, surgical procedures rather than medication, and therefore irrational drug use can be more common in surgical departments than in internal medicine departments. For that reason, surgical departments are likely to be a setting in which pharmacists play an important role.
In 2018, the GuangDong Pharmaceutical Association (GDPA) made an appeal to create surgical pharmacist positions in hospitals, defining their responsibilities as managing the whole pathway of medication during the perioperative period and beyond, acting as a bridge between surgeons and physicians.
Surgical pharmacists play a unique role in clinical practice and therefore require a unique knowledge system, which the GDPA has termed “surgical pharmacy”. The GDPA defined surgical pharmacy as a specialty that studies the characteristics of surgical medication, seeks the most suitable medication therapy and addresses medication-related problems for surgical patients in order to improve clinical outcomes.
Many large hospitals in GuangDong province now have established surgical pharmacist positions and surgical pharmacists are accepted by both surgeons and physicians. We commend the specialty of surgical pharmacy, and we encourage other countries around the world to build on the foundations laid by the GuangDong Pharmaceutical Association.

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