Pharmacists have been urged to move beyond their traditional roles of medicine dispensing and take leading positions in clinical research and drug trials to strengthen patient safety, improve healthcare outcomes and advance evidence-based medicine in Nigeria.
The Director of Pharmacy, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Pharm (Dr) Modupe Oyawole, made the call during a plenary session at the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria’s 99th Annual National Conference, Ijele ’26, in Awka, Anambra State.
In a presentation titled “Clinical Research and Trials Ecosystem: The Roles of Pharmacists”, Oyawole said pharmacists have critical responsibilities across the entire clinical research process, from identifying research questions and evaluating medicines to ensuring patient safety and regulatory compliance.
She explained that clinical research and clinical trials, although related, are not the same, noting that clinical research involves studying people, health data or tissue samples to understand health and disease, while clinical trials specifically tests new treatments and evaluated their effects on human health outcomes.
According to her, clinical research encompasses observational studies, interventions, surveys and behavioural studies aimed at expanding medical knowledge, whereas clinical trials focus on evaluating the safety and effectiveness of new treatments, including medicines, vaccines, medical devices and therapies.
She stressed the distinction with the statement, saying “every clinical trial is a clinical research, but not all clinical research is a clinical trial”.
Oyawole explained that a clinical trial was only one component of a much broader evidence-generation system that begins with the discovery of a promising molecule, proceeds through preclinical investigations and clinical trials, and continues through regulatory assessment and real-world evidence.
Highlighting the first major responsibility of pharmacists, she said they should be able to identify research questions from medication-related problems encountered in their daily professional practice. She said, “Pharmacists see medication-related problems every day. Research begins when we turn observation into a rigorous question”.
According to her, pharmacists must bring their knowledge of medicines to bear throughout the clinical trial process, particularly in ensuring appropriate medicine handling, dosing, safety monitoring and adherence, even as she highlighted their responsibility in building a bridge between patients and research evidence through counselling, adherence support and medication safety.
She explained that pharmacists could help research participants understand their medicines, treatment expectations and practical requirements, while identifying barriers to adherence, supporting treatment persistence and documenting medicine use.
On medication safety, she identified medication reconciliation and the identification of drug-related problems as important contributions pharmacists can make to protect participants and improve research quality.
Oyawole further identified pharmacokinetics as another important area of pharmacists’ involvement, explaining that their expertise could help establish the relationship between the doses administered, the concentration of a medicine in the body, the exposure of the patient and the resulting clinical response, noting that pharmacists can contribute to pharmacokinetic sampling, dose optimisation, interaction assessment and therapeutic drug monitoring.
The LASUTH Director of Pharmacy also drew attention to pharmacogenomics and its importance in advancing precision medicine, which seeks to establish not just whether a medicine works but the patients for whom it works, the appropriate exposure and the risks associated with its use.
She said “Precision medicine asks not only ‘Does it work, but ‘For whom, at what exposure, and with what risk?”
She however identified several challenges limiting pharmacists’ participation and leadership in clinical research, including inadequate mentorship, insufficient research training, limited funding, poor access to research networks, inadequate research infrastructure, limited leadership opportunities and weak industry-academia collaboration.
She observed that the problem was not the absence of opportunities for pharmacists in clinical research. “The gap is not the absence of a pharmacist role. It is the capacity to occupy that role at scale”, she stated.
To address the challenges, Oyawole outlined five key actions for Nigerian pharmacists, which include generating research, joining research initiatives, building capacity, taking leadership positions and translating research findings into practice.
She maintained that the objective should not simply be to have more pharmacists participating in research activities. “The goal is not to have more pharmacists around research; it is more pharmacists capable of shaping research”, she said.
She charged pharmacists to recognise that their professional responsibility extends beyond their knowledge of medicines to understanding and generating the evidence that establishes their safety, effectiveness and appropriate use, saying “If we as pharmacists are experts in medicines, we must also be experts in evidence about medicines”.
