Clinical Pharmacy the Discourse Community

Clinical Pharmacy The Discourse Community of Clinical Pharmacists Many professions have a specific set of terms -- arguably a full linguistic code -- that enable faster and more precise communication between members of the profession, yet that obscure the meaning of these communications outside the profession. This is one example of a "discourse community," and such communities can be found in many different professions.

The medical industry is home to many professions that have their own individual discourse communities, and the industry as a whole can also be thought of as one large discourse community, to some degree. Each different area of the medical world, however, has its own specialized language and terms that are specific to the functions and experiences of its branch of knowledge and expertise. Pharmacists form one such area in the field of medicine, and this particular discourse community will be further explored in this paper.

Community Members Practicing pharmacists and pharmacy technicians (on a somewhat more limited basis) obviously make up the bulk of the members of the pharmacist's discourse community, but there are many other peripheral members as well. Anyone with a solid grounding in basic medical terminology would necessarily be able to participate in the pharmaceutical discourse community to some degree, meaning that virtually all medical practitioners are a part of this discourse community in some part.

Pharmaceutical sales representatives and engineers, certain chemists, and even many well-versed patients would also be peripheral members of this community. A common knowledge of how various chemicals can be combined and how these chemicals interact with different processes in the human body binds this discourse community together.

Terminology used in this discourse community includes the brand names and generic names of many common pharmaceuticals, a host of medical terms including the names of certain ailments and disorders, and the names of many tools and descriptive terms used almost exclusively in the pharmaceutical trade. All members of this discourse community will necessarily have had some level of formal education regarding medical and/or pharmaceutical terminology, with most members having received higher education degrees and often-professional certification as well.

Certain preconceptions and assumptions arising from the cause and effect model that comprises Western views of health is a definite part of this discourse community, and there is an attendant belief in the efficacy of proper pharmaceutical treatment. This discourse might be beginning to shift, however. Current Conversations The pharmaceutical industry and thus the pharmaceutical discourse community as a whole is driven by a great deal of innovation in ongoing research meaning there are always a great number of conversations occurring within the discourse community.

Current issues, some of which suggest that a fundamental shift in the discourse community, include changing demographics in the taking of medications and consumption of pharmaceuticals, new sources of pharmaceutical compounds that had previously gone underutilized or summarily discounted and a host of other changing trends in pharmaceutical production and delivery (Humer 2005).

A large part of the discourse in the wider pharmaceutical community is concerned with the profitability of pharmaceutical endeavors over the long-term; ongoing profitability requires ongoing innovation not simply in improving production methods to lower costs, but also in developing new products to treat conditions more effectively and more safely or even to find new purposes for older pharmaceuticals (Humer 2005).

New sources for molecules and compounds to be used in pharmaceuticals are continuously proffered as solutions to the ongoing innovation problem and new compounds can also open up new demographics both by addressing different conditions and creating different cost profiles for various type of pharmaceuticals (Humer 2005). With these new pharmaceuticals emerging at an ever-faster rate, even local pharmacist necessarily find themselves engaged in the global trends of the pharmaceutical industry and changes to the pharmaceutical discourse community.

Natural Drugs One area that is of great interest to many in the pharmaceutical discourse community is the use of natural substances and compounds in pharmaceutical production. Though also quite controversial due to the environmental degradation that is created by any industrial interest in the natural world, pharmaceutical researchers are increasingly turning to plants and other naturally created compounds for the development of new pharmaceuticals (Newman & Cragg 2007).

As research continues into this relatively new and unexamined area of pharmaceutical potential, it is likely that many profound new discoveries will be made. One particular piece of research that examined twenty-five years' worth of empirical and primary research in the area of naturally derived pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical compounds came to some startling conclusions.

Though plants have been a major source of chemicals used in a variety of human industries, including in the pharmaceutical industry, these researchers concluded that is microbial interactions taking place on host plants in their natural settings that is often the source of the desired compounds rather then their having been derived directly from or by the plant itself (Newman & Cragg 2007).

This assertion is not entirely new, but it is made most compelling by the extent to which these researchers are able to provide details supporting this theory and indeed points to an exciting new area of pharmaceutical and environmental research that is truly at the heart of many scientific discourse communities, including the pharmaceutical community. Personal Intersection My own personal interests have long included a desire to improve man's relationship with and indeed as a part of nature.

This does not have to include a giving up of the many luxuries and amenities with which mankind has adorned itself often at the expense of nature, but rather I am interested in discovering how man can benefit from nature without destroying it. There is a definite place for this interest in man's symbiosis with nature in the pharmaceutical discourse community, as indeed the discovery of new pharmaceutical compounds relies quite heavily on the preservation of current level of biodiversity (Newman & Cragg 2007).

Determining exactly how plants -- or the microbes that make their homes on plants -- produce the pharmaceutical compounds that are being increasingly noticed, identified and utilized by the pharmaceutical industry is exactly the type of.