009 Claire Brandish
Claire is an experienced, inspiring, strong-minded, yet very modest antimicrobial pharmacist. She started her career with an interest in care of the elderly, an area of pharmacy that she wasn't expecting to love as much as she did. The idea of making clinical interventions and de-prescribing to prevent falls, for example, intrigued her. She highlights the fact that elderly patients take so many medications and this is a prime area for pharmacists to make a difference in patient care.
Her first experience of working in infectious diseases was at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for a 6 month rotation in Clinical Governance and Risk combined with Antimicrobials. This role was a great combination as antimicrobial prescribing is a constant battle between weighing up risks vs taking the medication and the governance aspect of this role is also very similar. This role allowed Claire to experience directorate level work in audits, quality assurance, writing guidelines, and implementing NPSA alerts.
She fell in love with infectious diseases in this job and hasn't looked back! She loves working alongside consultants and going on ward rounds, making positive changes to prescribing, ensuring patients aren't having unnecessary antibiotics to begin with, IV to oral switches etc. The role involves a lot of governance too - guideline writing and policy development, auditing, and service improvement - elements of the job that Claire thoroughly enjoys!
In November 2018 whilst working at Buckinghamshire NHS Trust, there was a call for NHS staff to support proposals to tackle Antimicrobial Resistance in commonwealth countries in Africa. The Commonwealth Partnerships for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) scheme – funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Fleming Fund / UKAid– has supported 12 health partnerships across Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to fight AMR. The CwPAMs projects, started in February 2019, have been supported by the Commonwealth Pharmacy Association (CPA) and Tropical Health Education Trust (THET).
The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer Global Health Fellows programme is the first Global Health fellowship for pharmacists funded by Health Education England (HEE). It compliments the CwPAMS programme and aims to support pharmacists by furthering leadership and project management skills throughout their work on the projects.
Claire and her team have embraced this opportunity and she talks about her experience in detail in the podcast!
I received some feedback about Claire from her team this week that I cannot help but share because it truly demonstrates her quality as a person and a professional:
"Working with Claire for the last 5 years has been inspiring. She is approachable, hard working, and has always been supportive of me since the beginning of my career. She is not only the best manager I have had, but she has also become a very close friend of mine" Bee Yean Ng
"It is a real privilege to work with Claire. She is an all round excellent pharmacist with exceptional skills in antimicrobial stewardship. She is kindness personified and very humble. Working with her on the commonwealth partnerships for antimicrobial stewardship has been a brilliant experience and her passion and dedication to improving antimicrobial stewardship has become evident on a global scale. I am also very lucky to call her my friend." Kate Russell-Hobbs
If you are interested in antimicrobial stewardship, you want to know more about the fellowship Claire is currently undertaking, or you want to look at some education and training resources for infectious diseases, please look at the links below:
1) The Tropical Health Education Trust - this has loads of information about grants and how to get involved in similar work to the CwPAMs project. I really enjoyed the podcasts
2) The Commonwealth Pharmacy Association - you can become a member for a small fee and this will give insights on how to become more involved as a pharmacist in the Commonwealth
3) UKCPA Pharmacy Infection Network - this is worth every penny of my annual subscription and has often saved me on a friday afternoon! They also have a series of webinars running from 30th July starting with the first one, an Introduction to Microbiology being free
4) The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy - is worth being a member of as they advertise great conferences for networking opportunities and they have a free e-book on AMS:
5) Future Learn have loads of great free courses like this one but also more specific courses such as wound management
6) Health Education England resources - antimicrobial resistance
7) Public Health England resources
8) The following is a link to an online training package which is written really well, considering the theory and applying it to a practical, real-life scenario. It's been written by Southampton so some of the examples are based on their guidance but the theory still holds
You can follow Claire on Instagram @brandmennis and on twitter @Clairebrandish1.
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