Pharmacy practice research group

The Pharmacy Practice Division comprises thirteen pharmacists, of whom six have an active clinical role working in primary and secondary care. The majority of staff provide research informed teaching on clinical therapeutics, with some staff also being research active in fields of education, service improvement and better use of medicines, where we have active DPharm and PhD students.

Research partners

The practice group works closely with the Drug Safety Research Unit (DSRU) at Burseldon, Hampshire, an associate college of the University of Portsmouth, collaborating with clinicians, pharmacists and scientists to apply their expertise in post-marketing surveillance to a range of shared research topics at Masters level. The unit produces world-class research into the safety of marketed medicines through the application of a variety of pharmacovigilance techniques including prescription event monitoring.

There are partnerships for research and innovation with the Wessex Academic Health Science Network on medicines optimisation, and Wessex ARC on deprescribing.

Current projects

We are involved in a number of funded studies, including:

• REVERSE - Looking at self-care in pre-hypertension
• MODIFY - Looking at how best to deprescribe medicines in a multi professional environment
• DECISIONS - Looking at improving stroke care pathways
• MICROGUIDE-2 - Looking at improving antibiotic prescribing
• INCUBATOR - Looking at clinical academic pathways for pharmacists

Other studies and collaborations include:

• REDUCE Carbon study - Looking at 'green' inhaler choices
• Pharmaceuticals and the environment
• Clinical decision making

PhD/DPharm projects cover a wide range of topics and include:

• Professionalism
• Patient decision aids in gout and heart failure
• Use of IT to support hypertension management
• Muslim beliefs around medicine taking