Celebrating World Pharmacists Day

To celebrate World pharmacist day (25 September 2022) the south west pharmacy clinical fellows shared their career journeys to highlight the variety of roles and responsibilities delivered by the pharmacy workforce family; Farzana Mohammed and Lindsay Steel.

Farzana Mohammed is a Pharmacy Clinical fellow working with Health Education England Pharmacy South on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in pharmacy programmes. Farzana's project ‘What are the challenges to a truly inclusive ‘pre-registration’ pharmacy training programme?’ is exploring the lived experience of the pharmacy trainee workforce.

At the SW Clinical Fellowship forum, Farzana discussed the various roles in her portfolio career journey which includes the experience of working in primary, secondary and urgent care across NHS Wales and developing the skills of the pharmacy workforce with Health Education Improvement Wales. Farzana’s volunteering work as Pharmacy Lead for Muslim Doctors Cymru, a group working to tackle health inequalities in ethnic minority communities in Wales is promoted in a Royal pharmaceutical society (RPS) blog to support vaccine uptake in BAME communities and having the COVID-19 vaccine during Ramadan.

Farzana is passionate about EDI and has championed the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) Inclusion and diversity strategy as a member of the Action in Belonging, Culture and Diversity (ABCD) group. You can read Farzana's work in RPS Task and finish groups to deliver race and gender-related microaggressions reference documents, which will be part of Farzana’s fellowship project.

Lindsay Steel is currently on a one-year secondment with HEE south west as a Clinical Pharmacy Technician Fellow. Lindsay's project is to look into the education, training and leadership opportunities available to pharmacy technicians in the community pharmacy setting by promoting the opportunities this profession has to offer the public; across the many interfaces of the NHS family.

At the SW Clinical Fellowship forum, Lindsay shared her career journey to date, in the UK and Australia. Starting from the leadership journey to alcohol services and to the fantastic opportunities the Clinical Fellowship has allowed Linsday to give back to the workforce.

As one of the NHS's newer registered professions, being only ten years old, our Clinical Pharmacy Technician Fellows team are on a journey to share how they can support our colleagues across the board in delivering pharmacy services. The team are keen to take on the complex challenges that the profession face around delivering cost-effective care but most importantly, are ready to develop the talent needed to deliver future service requirements for our patients.