The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7189 p381
16 March 2002

Life-changing effect of Society's awards

At a seminar at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's headquarters on 7 March, pharmacists described how their lives had changed after winning practice research awards offered by the Society to its members.

The seminar was organised by the Society's practice research division to celebrate the success of the award scheme and give publicity to some of the research that it has supported over the years.

The Society offers two practice research awards: the Sir Hugh Linstead fellowships and the Galen award. The Linstead fellowships, which total £30,000 annually, are specifically for research that aims to develop some aspect of community pharmacy services. The fellowships are financed by a grant from the Leverhulme Trade Charities trust. The Galen award, worth up to £10,000 annually, may be used to support research in any aspect of pharmacy practice. It is financed by income from a trust fund set up in the will of the late Rowland Henry Williams of Holyhead.

The awards are open to both new and experienced researchers. Applications are peer-reviewed by an independent panel of researchers, who scrutinises their relevance and feasibility as well as their methodological rigour. The panel is chaired by Professor Michael Schofield (a member of the Society's Council) and its other members are Professor Judy Cantrill (School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Manchester), Dr Jill Jesson (School of Pharmacy, Aston University) and Dr Catherine Duggan (Academic Department of Pharmacy, Barts and the London NHS Trust).

One of nine award winners who made short presentations at the meeting is Charles Morecroft (School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Manchester), who has received three awards. He says that the award scheme was responsible for his move from work as a locum pharmacist into a career in pharmacy practice research. As a community pharmacist he developed an interest in the way people talk about their experiences of illnesses. After studying psychology with the Open University, he won both the Galen award and a Linstead fellowship in 1998. The Galen award paid the course fees for a master's degree in psychological research methods and the Linstead fellowship supported research that led to a dissertation on community pharmacists' beliefs and the influence they have on their decisions involving the treatment of minor ailment. This work led to an offer to pursue a PhD at the University of Manchester, where his research was concerned with patients' perspectives of their illnesses and treatments. A further Linstead award in 2001 allowed him to expand the final phase of the research into a multicentred study using "Q methodology", a technique that acts as a bridge between qualitative and quantitative research.

Mr Morecroft says that, as well as providing money, confidence and a taste for research, the awards have allowed him to integrate pharmacy and psychology and given him the opportunity to network with other researchers. By providing funding to support small research projects, the awards give pharmacists the ability to use methods not normally found in pharmacy. They allow practitioners to gain experience in a different arena, and they enhance the award winner's professional standing both within pharmacy and interprofessionally.

Professor Rob Horne (Centre for Health Care Research, University of Brighton) says that his life has changed, too, as a result of a practice research award. He was a clinical pharmacist, but the research made possible by his Linstead fellowship in 1998 led to his current chair in psychology applied to health care. Professor Horne's research looked at hypertensive patients' perceptions of their illness and medication and their adherence to treatment. The work suggests a role for community pharmacists in eliciting and addressing patients' information needs, concerns and misconceptions.

Dr Jo Barnes is now a research fellow in the Centre for Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy at the School of Pharmacy, University of London — a post she believes would not have been open to her without a background of research supported by a Linstead fellowship. She won the fellowship in 1997 to support research into community pharmacists' experiences of complementary medicines, carried out at the Exeter University's Department of Complementary Medicine. As a result of her research, she suggests that there is room for improvement in pharmacy practice with regard to complementary medicines, and that pharmacists' role in reporting adverse reactions to such products should be encouraged. The profession should try to raise public awareness of the pharmacist as a source of objective, reliable information on complementary medicines.

Another London School of Pharmacy research student, Sarah Garfield (née Chait), has used her 1999 Galen award and a 2000 Linstead fellowship to support research into roles for pharmacists in managing depression in primary care. Through interviews with patients she investigated the factors that affect their decisions when starting courses of antidepressant therapy. The research has identified unmet information needs and identified potential roles for pharmacists.

Claire Bateson (Barts and the London NHS Trust and School of Pharmacy, University of London) won the 2001 Galen award, which she is using to support research into improving pharmaceutical care across the health care interface. Her randomised controlled trial is examining the benefits of using ward pharmacists to compile drug-related information to send both to the discharge patient's GP and to a community pharmacist nominated by the patient.

Joel Hirst, a community pharmacist in Bristol, won the 1997 Galen award while working as a pharmaceutical adviser in Gwent. By investigating pharmacy users' views of the service they received from pharmacies, his research has raised a number of issues for pharmacy to consider. One finding he describes as startling is a deep concern about the lack of privacy in pharmacies.

Before gaining the 1998 Galen award, Jacky Nunney was a locum pharmacist with little research experience. The award made it possible for her to conduct a successful research project and she is now nearing the end of a second project after winning another Galen award in 2000. Both projects have been concerned with the use of multicompartment compliance aids in primary care. One finding from the first project was that many patients receive such aids with little or no assessment of whether their use is appropriate. In her current project, Mrs Nunney is testing an assessment protocol.

Jane Urie, a medicines management and information pharmacist in Inverness, used a 1999 Linstead fellowship to support an investigation into the pharmaceutical care needs of palliative care patients in the community, with the aim of introducing a systematic approach to meeting these needs. The research has identified a large number of pharmaceutical care issues, which are currently being analysed.

Emma Jones, of the Welsh School of Pharmacy, is using a 2001 Linstead award to fund the second year of a PhD programme, in which she is examining how men manage their illnesses and where they seek health advice and information. Early findings suggest, among other things, that men do not like to discuss their health issues with female pharmacy staff.