Bridging the gap between clinical pharmacology and rational drug prescribing 2.0 : An up-date after 30 years

Fully aware of the unusual timing of submitting a commentary 30 years later, we want to reflect on the June edition of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (BJCP) (1993), which featured four research articles on education in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) written by our former professor, Theo de Vries, and an editorial highlighting the imperative to improve CPT education, specifically by paying more attention to rational drug prescribing for common diseases.1–5 This plea was illustrated by five cartoons (Figure 1) and formed the basis for the World Health Organization's (WHO) Guide to Good Prescribing and its 6-step. The first four cartoons portrayed the suboptimal state of CPT education as a metaphorical ‘Clinical Pharmacology Continent’ (CPC) and a ‘General Practitioners Island’ (GPI), with a large gap between them. While clinical pharmacologists investigated new drug therapies, general practitioners frequently found themselves unprepared when making rational treatment decisions.1 The final cartoon introduced a solution: problembased learning education, depicted as a bridge connecting the continent and the island. Over the past 30 years, considerable progress has been achieved in bridging the gap. Therefore, we intend to illustrate this transformation with a similar cartoon (Figure 2).