Dissertation abstracts and project descriptions 2023

Abstract

The growth of the research input in the Department of Pharmacy has grown from strength to strength. The progress that has taken place involved enlargement in both the breadth and depth of knowledge. The dissertation abstracts and project descriptions illustrate some of the areas of investigation undertaken in the past year by our students. In recent years it seemed clear that a new impetus was needed if necessary progress was to be made in getting pharmacy and the pharmaceutical scenarios to be patient-centred. Academic research and popular interest in health have grown dramatically and pharmacy played a powerful role in the considerable progress made in conceptualising and delineating health as an integrated area for study. The Pharmacy Department at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Malta took a practical intervention in the last ten years by establishing the Doctorate in Pharmacy Level 8 degree in collaboration with the University of Illinois Chicago College of Pharmacy. A cursory look at the past symposium abstracts, which expose the students’ work, incidentally this year celebrating half a century of projects, shows that pharmacy studies have moved forward from the concept of sole study of ‘illness’ to that of ‘health’ and led forward the discourse on health and pharmacy from a fabrication stage to practice. [excerpt]