Student activity: Raising Antibiotic Awareness

Our second year students, Promise, Rhys and Jamie (pictured left to right) recently put up a fantastic stand to raise awareness on the important issue of antimicrobial resistance. On the day, they handed out information leaflets and invited people to watch a video by Public Health England (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef4QHUS5760) encouraging everyone to ‘Keep Antibiotics Working’. They also motivated people to chose a pledge and sign up to become ‘Antibiotic Guardians’ on www.antibioticguardian.com.

New publication: ‘The lesser of two evils’ vs ‘medicines not Smarties’

Gill D, Almutairi S and Donyai P. ‘The lesser of two evils’ vs ‘medicines not Smarties’: constructing antipsychotics in dementia. The Gerontologist. 2017 (In Press) ISSN Print ISSN 0016-9013. doi:10.1093/geront/gnx178

Dr Parastou Donyai, Associate Professor of Social and Cognitive Pharmacy at the University of Reading who led the research said:

“What we saw was that using ‘the lesser of two evils’ argument to justify the overprescribing of antipsychotics comes with assumptions about what is best for patients and carers, often without a good understanding of what risks are associated with using the medication or alternative ways to manage behaviour. Dementia is one of the most prevalent diseases affecting the world with more than 45 million people experiencing it in some form or another, so it’s really important that we understand the best ways of caring for our loved ones and stop the uncritical over-prescription of drugs that may not be suitable for patients.”

“What we see is that people providing dementia care can built up a way to rationalise the over-prescription of antipsychotics while protecting themselves when discussing the issue. We do know that similar attitudes are adopted with other medication, and we need to look further at how to correct the unquestioned assumptions that lie behind what was expressed in interviews.”

Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy

Congratulations to Dr. Amelia Hollywood who has recently attained Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. This achievement demonstrates her commitment to delivering high quality teaching to our students. It is awarded by the Higher Education Academy for meeting the criteria of the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) and is also recognised by a growing number of international institutions.

 

PhD success: study of medication administration errors

Many congratulations to Hesham Abduldaem (pictured in the centre) for defending his PhD thesis successfully, passing his viva with minor corrections on Friday 20 October 2017. Hesham’s thesis is entitled: “Medication Administration Errors Studied Through the Mixed-Methods Lens” and the external examiner was Dr Richard Keers (pictured to the left) an expert in the field of medication errors in pharmacy. The internal examiner was Professor Gary Stephens (pictured to the right).