On June 24, 2024, the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) successfully reviewed and listed the GMU-TUH Clinical Pharmacy Research Fellowship (link). This is the first of its kind outside USA. The GMU-TUH Clinical Pharmacy Research Fellowship is offered in collaboration with Washington State University (WSU). The Program Director for the Fellowship is Prof. Dixon Thomas of GMU, and the research supervisors are Dr. Diana Malaeb from GMU, Prof. Danial Baker and Prof. Terri Levien from WSU. The first two fellows; Dr. Shabaz Gulam and Dr. Ahmad El-Ouweini started their fellowship research in 2022 and are expected to complete in 2024.
The GMU-TUH Clinical Pharmacy Research Fellowship program is the first and only fellowship for pharmacy in the UAE. The purpose of the fellowship is to create a track for clinical pharmacists to turn them into clinician scientists. This is a necessary step in UAE to be eligible for an academic professorial appointment when the candidate is not a PhD holder. We believe that this fellowship program is critical to advancing practice and pharmacy education in the country and the region. As clinical pharmacists become independent researchers, their role in practice will expend to take on research projects that improve practice and help introduce new clinical pharmacy services bringing about better patient care and more respect to the pharmacy profession. Clinician scientists will be in a strategic position to have a cross appointment between a College of Pharmacy and an affiliated hospital which will provide an invaluable boost to pharmacy education in the UAE and the entire region. The fellowship program is intended to provide comprehensive postgraduate training to prepare a pharmacy fellow to design, initiate, conduct, manage, monitor and evaluate disease and patient management programs in the clinical setting.