Sharon Haughey

A patient perspective of pharmacist prescribing: ‘crossing the specialisms‐crossing the illnesses’

The drive for non‐medical prescribing has progressed quickly since the late 1990s and involves a range of healthcare professionals including pharmacists. As part of a commissioned research project, this qualitative element of a larger case study focused on the views of patients of pharmacist prescribers.

They come with multiple morbidities: a qualitative assessment of pharmacist prescribing

This paper presents qualitative findings from a larger sequential mixed methods study which sought to provide an in-depth understanding of pharmacist prescribing from the perspective of pharmacist prescribers, medical colleagues and key stakeholders in Northern Ireland. Transcriptions were analyzed using thematic analysis as the interviews progressed and emergent themes were identified and coded (along with supporting quotes) independently and by consensus of the research team. Three major themes emerged in relation to pharmacist prescribing: the effect on patient care; challenges facing pharmacist prescribers and the importance of the interprofessional team (where two or more different professions with varied, yet complementary experience work together with a common purpose). Pharmacist prescribing may have the potential to reduce the medication burden for patients (as reported by pharmacists) as pharmacists tend to provide a more comprehensive medication review than doctors; the additional time for consultations made this possible. Further research is required on how interprofessional team working can be maximized in the context of pharmacist prescribing, particularly in relation to the management of multi-morbidity.

Developing Entrepreneurial Skills in Pharmacy Students

Objective. To create, implement, and evaluate a workshop that teaches undergraduate pharmacy students about entrepreneurship. Design. Workshops with 3 hours of contact time and 2 hours of self-study time were developed for final-year students. Faculty members and students evaluated peer assessment, peer development, communication, critical evaluation, creative thinking, problem solving, and numeracy skills, as well as topic understanding. Student evaluation of the workshops was done primarily via a self-administered, 9-item questionnaire. Assessment. One hundred thirty-four students completed the workshops. The mean score was 50.9 out of 65. Scores ranged from 45.9 to 54.1. The questionnaire had a 100% response rate. Many students agreed that workshops about entrepreneurship were a useful teaching method and that key skills were fostered. Conclusion. Workshops effectively delivered course content about entrepreneurship and helped develop relevant skills. This work suggests students value instruction on entrepreneurship.

Pharmacy prescribing in XXXX – a quantitative assessment

I begin by offering a brief overview of the methodological concerns of PaR, locating it within both established and emergent research paradigms. I then go on to suggest that we need to understand the entanglement of PaR with epistemologies that are crucially embodied, emphasizing the significance of motility and materalities in PaR. Here, experiential and embodied knowing is brought into focus through anthropologist Tim Ingold’s (2011: 17) notion of ‘materials-in-motion’, encompassing the work of the feet, as well as the hands and the head. Through these ideas I foreground the significance of expert skill in PaR, an area that has to date received little attention. PaR is elaborated here as a form of enskilled, in-process research. I note that, in its embracing of subjectivity and intuition, PaR is sometimes messy, but always reflective and reflexive, in its methods. In the final section I offer a framework for PaR enquiries and discuss the often multi-modal and multi-voiced outcomes of choreographic PaR to propose that the artistic researcher, via purposeful strategies of emplacement, position their epistemic materials for diverse publics.