Senior Lecturer

I studied pharmacy at the Central Institute of Technology in Silverstream Wellington and worked in Waikato as a registered community pharmacist for four years before heading to England for the kiwi O.E. (overseas experience). I landed on my feet with a ward pharmacy job at the Dulwich Hospital, education rotations at the Kings College Hospital and commitments to the psychiatric wards at the Maudsley Hospital. This role triggered my passion for mental health pharmacy and the need to improve education and training for pharmacists and prescribers alike to get the best medicine for each individual patient. I developed a computerised record of medication (this was the 1980's) for our clients which suggested the education of choice dependent on what had got them well on the last admission (Bunn, Taylor and x et al). Thereby reducing overexposure to potent antipsychotics and associated adverse effects. This role also included working with the Consultant team for the elder in general medicine and contributing to the education of junior doctors when they joined the team. I then moved to Gloucetsehsire Royal Hospital as Senior Pharmacist for Elder Care and the mental health wards, leading to research and audit projects as well as publications aimed at upskilling the wider pharmacy profession. In 2000 I moved to educate undergraduate and postgraduate pharmacists in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology and the University of Bath (UoB). I developed several innovative education and assessment units culminating in the development of the Post Graduate Diploma units and the Pharmacist prescribing Programme, which at the time was recognised by external examiners as the best in the country. Teaching from these programmes supported the development of the undergraduate programme and the Department of Health am to have pharmacists fit for purpose on graduation as I inculcated physical and mental health assessment and communication skills addressing listening to the patient and managing emotion within a consultation. Alongside this, I was the Lead for Interprofessional education (IPE) where I developed a tripartite agreement with the Bristol School of Medicine, the West of England School of Adult Nursing and the UoB to develop PE sessions across the curricula for each group. There are publications here and some of these sessions have been in situ since 2004. In 2017 I moved back home to New Zealand with a Senior Lecturer role within the Faculty of Health at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. I teach across the various curricula, with a focus on prescribing and deprescribing, safe medicine use and clinical pharmacology. My research interests fit broadly under the umbrella of public mental health and pharmacy practice.