A Day in the Life By Dr. Melanie Dalby, Clinical Academic Research Lead for pharmacy, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
My day varies depending on which day of the week you are asking about. As a clinical academic I contribute to patient care on a clinical level but also support the improvement of patient care through my academic adventures.
My clinical days on a Monday and a Friday normally involve ward work as a pharmacist on our haematology wards. Here at King’s College Hospital, we have four wards that treat patients with leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma, rarer haematological malignancies and sickle
cell disease. Over the two and a half years I’ve worked at the hospital, I’ve developed wonderful working relationships with the staff on the wards. This means that they proactively ask me questions related to patient care from drug administration queries through to drug-drug interactions and supportive medication inquiries. As a haematology ward pharmacist, my main duties are ensuring the chemotherapy, and stem cell transplant prescriptions are accurately verified, medication supply requests are timely actioned, and medication administration and discharge charts are reviewed for accuracy. We are fortunate to have a medicines management pharmacy technician on our wards who reviews patients' drug histories on admission.
One of the most enjoyable parts of my role is counselling patients on their discharge medications. This activity is so important as it gives the patient the opportunity to ask questions about their medicines. Often, I make changes to their discharge medication after this interaction to personalise their care in liaison with their medical team.
I hugely value the clinical element of my role. It provides me with new research ideas as I see problems on the frontline that warrant further investigation or improvement studies. It also reminds me why I work for the National Health Service. The academic side of my role provides support to the pharmacy department with their research ambitions. We have staff of different roles, seniority and specialisms undertaking audits, service evaluations, quality improvements and research. There are three members of staff undertaking a PhD with more who are interested in the future. This role means I interact with most of our department which has over 400 members. Part of the role is encouraging staff to get involved in research, signposting them to educational resources and supporting staff to apply for research funding. I make sure to designate a proportion of my week to my own research.
Whilst at the moment I am undertaking locally collected data, I am hoping that one or two of my current projects will expand into research programmes. I try to maintain a growth mindset to expand my knowledge of different research methods so that I feel confident in qualitative, quantitative, observational and literature reviews. I supervise pharmacy and master’s students; I’m hoping to expand this to PhD students in the future. I spend time leading and progressing the work undertaken by the British Oncology Pharmacy Association research sub-committee alongside a colleague. Whilst I write this, I realise that there is more to tell. Hopefully our paths will cross in the future, and I can tell you in person.