Staff Profiles

Professor Parastou Donyai, head of division, joined RSOP in November 2008. Parastou is a pharmacist and a psychologist. She researches prescribing, medicines use, and medicines discontinuation, using social and psychological research methods. Parastou is also the Programme Director for the MSc by Research in Pharmacy Practice.

Dr Rosemary Lim lecturer in Pharmacy practice joined RSOP in August 2013.  Her research is focused on improving system safety based on an in-depth understanding of the interactions between humans and technology in the workspace using a human factors approach.

Dr Nilesh Patel lecturer in Pharmacy practice joined RSOP in August 2014 and is now the MPharm Programme Director. His work includes the evaluation of pharmacists in GP surgeries and of other pharmacy services. He is also interested in the area of Clinical Pharmaceutics (solving pharmaceutical problems in the clinic).

Dr Amelia Hollywood is a Health Psychologist and a lecturer in Health Services Research who joined RSOP in the summer of 2016. Her research focuses on health behaviours and behaviour change, with a track record of funding and publications in the medical management of obesity. Amelia is also the Ethics representative for Pharmacy.

Dr. Ranjita Dhital is a pharmacist and has joined RSOP as a lecturer in Pharmacy practice in Jan 2018. Dr. Ranjita has worked as a specialist drug and alcohol addiction pharmacist and her research focuses on developing and utilising the skills of pharmacists in this field. She is also interested in the interplay of arts and health and employing this approach to optimise community pharmacy spaces.

Ravi Savania is a practising pharmacist and lecturer in Pharmacy Practice.

Daniel Grant is Associate Professor in Pharmacy Education & Clinical Pharmacy. He joined RSOP in 2006, first as a teacher practitioner, before being promoted full-time to the role of Lead Pharmacist Teacher Practitioner. He is now the Director of Teaching and Learning.

Catherine Langran is a lecturer in Pharmacy Practice who joined RSOP in 2011. Catherine’s current role focuses on undergraduate pharmacy student teaching. Catherine has won several awards for developing teaching & learning related activities and evaluations and also line-manages our team of teacher pracitioners.

All our Teacher-Practitioners spend part of their time practising as pharmacists in either hospital or community pharmacy and the other part teaching pharmacy students. Some colleagues are also pre-registration tutors so they help and advise students on their applications for employment. Currently, our Teacher-Practitioner team includes:

Kim Ridout has recently joined the pharmacy practice team in Oct 2016. As well as working as a Teacher Practitioner here at the university, Kim works as a hospital pharmacist at Frimley Health Foundation Trust, where she works within the acute frailty multi-disciplinary team based on the Older Persons Short Stay Unit.

Ritienne Fenech is an Education and Training pharmacist and joined the team in Jan 2018. Ritenne is currently the Education Programme Director at Wexham Park Hospital with experience of managing pre-registration and diploma pharmacists in addition to covering medical and surgical wards.

Dr Caroline Parkhurst joined RSOP as a Teacher Practitioner in 2014. She spends 50% of her time at the university and also works in the superintendent’s office of Day Lewis, a company with 317 community pharmacies located throughout England. Caroline spends her time at Day Lewis dealing with professional matters relating to maintaining and improving the quality of pharmacy services provided. She is also team leader for Day Lewis Teacher Practitioners at other university pharmacy departments, works with other university pharmacy schools, and is involved in developing the pre-registration training program for the 60-80 trainees that Day Lewis recruits each year.

Mona Qassim joined RSOP in 2014 as a Teacher Practitioner.  Mona balances many roles including working half her time as a Specialist Mental Health Pharmacist within the Community Mental Health Teams in Berkshire Healthcare NHS FT. She also works within the Urgent Care services as a non-medical prescriber. Education and training is an essential part of her roles as well as teaching undergraduate students, she teaches postgraduate students, healthcare professionals, patients and their carers promoting optimum use of medication.

Vicky Kleanthous joined RSOP in 2017 as a Teacher Practitioner and is now running the placements at the Royal Berkshire Hospital where she also works one day a week. Vicky has many years experience as a clinical pharmacist in hospital pharmacy including the supervision of pre-registration and diploma pharmacists.

Sawsen Sabbah joined RSOP in May 2018. In addition to working as a Teacher Practitioner, Sawsen is the Lead Frailty Pharmacist at Basingstoke Hospital. She previously worked within the Renal, Transplant and Antimicrobial Stewardship Teams at Oxford University Hospitals. She’s passionate about teaching and has had experience teaching pre-registration pharmacists and diploma pharmacists, as well as conducting teaching for the wider multi-disciplinary team such as nurses and medical doctors. She has also delivered talks at various regional meetings and national conferences.

Gurinder Singh is a practicing pharmacist and works as a Teacher Practitioner at the university. He has experience of tutoring pre-registration pharmacists as well as technicians in a community setting. As well as holding a community pharmacy role, Gurinder looks after 140 care homes providing advice to promote safe utilisation of medicines, promoting cost effective prescribing and minimising wastage of medicines.

Tolu Ojo joined the teacher practitioner team in September 2019. Currently she works as a senior rotational pharmacist (Education and Training) at Royal Berkshire hospital. Within this role, she is involved with mentoring and developing clinical pharmacists in hospital pharmacy as well as the supervision of pre-registration and diploma pharmacists. In her capacity as a teacher practitioner, Tolu is involved in the teaching of undergraduate pharmacy students about professional practice.

Sophie Oduyale and Flavia Ghouri joined the team as Graduate Teaching Assistants in 2016. They are also registered pharmacists and assist with teaching in the department as well as working on their respective PhD projects. Sophie is currently working on investigating intravenous drug compatibility in hospital practice and Flavia’s project is focused on antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic use in pregnancy.