Today the pharmacy world lost a leader in pharmaceutical care
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EDITORIAL
Today the pharmacy world lost a leader in pharmaceutical care Filipa Alves da Costa1
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
In most published papers about pharmaceutical care, there is somewhere a reference to the work or proposed definitions by one of the world’s leaders in this area. Probably the person that did the most work for the advancement of pharmaceutical care in Europe, and certainly with global recognition, was Foppe van Mil. Foppe was a practitioner who worked daily in a local community pharmacy, interacted with his patients, visiting them at home if needed, and worked collaboratively with the local physicians to optimise therapy and ensure optimal medication use. This is a mere snapshot of his practice-based tangible contribution to pharmaceutical care. This work was restricted to a small remote location in the Netherlands but becoming aware of the benefits in outcomes experienced by his patients, Foppe quickly understood that the concept needed to be expanded and engaged in this task in various formats. One of his greatest contributions to research and science was the creation of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy (IJCP) in 1979. IJCP, named Pharmacy World & Science until 2010 [1], is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly international journal that focuses on research and practice in pharmacotherapy, outcomes research, clinical pharmacy, pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, medicines information, pharmacy services research and pharmaceutical care [2]. Foppe van Mil was the editor in chief, an exemplary one, who carefully read all submissions to the journal and competently and progressively increased the journal’s reputation, it’s dissemination, outreach and impact factor. Through this and other journals, Foppe published many articles showing the world the benefits of pharmaceutical care as a new practice, for patients, for the profession and for society as whole. He took it as his duty to change a profession and improve pharmacy practice [3], ultimately aiming to improve patient outcomes that matter [4]. His work is used as reference by many researchers worldwide to better * Filipa Alves da Costa [email protected] 1
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal
understand the meaning and scope of pharmaceutical care practice in the Netherlands [5], in Europe [6, 7], in Asia [8] and in Latin America [9]. Foppe was very much concerned with terminology and accurate and precise definitions [10]. For this reason, he produced important papers to define the scope and implementation of pharmaceutical care [11–13], clinical pharmacy [14] and medication review [15, 16]. Another associated concern was the need to document interventions [17] and do so in a way that may be retrievable, reproduceable and useful to demonstrate the added value of pharmaceutical care. This led Foppe to spend an important part of his career developing and refining classifications for drug-related problems [18, 19]. Foppe has often advocated for the need for pharmacists to be able to communic
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