Profile

I work 2 days per week for a community mental health team in Nottinghamshire. I run two pharmacist-led clinics each week. I see patients with various conditions including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression and work with them to ensure their medicines are right for them in terms of both their mental health and their physical health. Medicines are often a critical factor (but not the only factor) for recovery from these illnesses so it’s important that we get it right. Some of the medicines we use to treat these conditions have lots of side effects so it’s important we work closely with patients to minimise this. I am also a line manager in this role for a pharmacy technician in the same mental health team. We work together on initiatives to improve the use of medicines for our patients.

I also work 3 days per week for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group as a specialist mental health pharmacist. This is more of a ‘strategic’ role and I have input into how mental health medicines are used across Nottinghamshire – taking into account safety, effectiveness and cost. This can include writing guidelines for primary care and supporting GPs with complex queries about mental health medicines. I monitor prescribing trends of mental health medicines to ensure they are being used correctly.

When working with the community mental health team, I run clinics in the mornings and spend the afternoons following up actions from clinic, recording notes and responding to queries about medicines from other members of the team (consultant psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses etc).

When working for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire CCG my days are very flexible and there is no typical day! We are working from home at the moment so our meetings are all done online. I tend to prioritise my work each week and allocate time to different projects or to answering queries.