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The latest news and updates for medical and non-medical prescribers

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Collaboration with BAMAN

BAMAN are delighted to announce a joint collaboration with The Association for Prescribers. Both associations are aligned in sharing best practices, developing educational initiatives, as

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Penny Franklin

Treasurer of the Association for Prescribers

Penny is an Associate Professor at Plymouth University. Her expertise is in Non-Medical Prescribing and Medicines Management. 

She has a background in Adult Nursing, Health Visiting and Children’s Nursing.

She works nationally with the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association as their prescribing link and is a Fellow of the Institute of Health Visiting. 

Penny is part of the BNF Sub-committee for the Community Practitioners Formulary. 

She has published widely with regards to Non-Medical Prescribing and Medicines Management.

Linda Nesbitt

Committee Member

Linda has an MSc in Advanced Practice, BSc in Nursing with a specialist qualification in adult critical care and has worked within NHS Scotland for over 40 years.

She was one of the first Advanced Nurse Practitioners within Scotland and also one of the first to undertake the non-medical Prescribing qualification within the acute sector.

She is an experienced Clinical Nurse Manager for Advanced Practice within NHS Golden Jubilee Hospital on the outskirts of Glasgow & has also been the Non-Medical Prescribing lead for the trust for many years.

She has presented widely in relation to advanced practice & non-medical prescribing and has been an active board member of the National Non-Medical Prescribing Leads Group for Scotland over many years. This group has representatives from all 14 Scottish health boards, Scottish Government, NHS Education for Scotland & the National Higher Education Institutes group. For the last 4 years has acted as co-chair of this group ensuring a ‘Once for Scotland’ approach to the Non-Medical Prescribing national agenda.

Eleri Mills

Committee Member

Eleri is an experienced Health Visitor and nurse educator and has worked in pre and post registration nurse education.

Currently she is Programme Leader for Non-Medical Prescribing. She is a committee member of the Association for Prescribers UK (AFP) and has also been involved as an expert panel member and external examiner in a number of Approved Educational Institutions (AEI) NMP validations in England. As such she complements the programme in a significant way by bench marking the programme with best practice elsewhere in the UK.

She is also a member representing the University on the local (BCUHB) NHS Trust Board for NMP implementation. In addition she is a Specialist Lecturer on the SCPHN programme and is a member of the UK Standing Conference on Specialist Community Public Health Nurse Education.

Laura Troiano

Committee Member

Laura is an experienced dietitian with extensive GI/FODMAP experience and early implementer of dietetic non-medical prescribing. She works closely with pharmacy and GP practices to support safe, effective prescribing practice in NHS Forth Valley. Creator and chair Scottish NMP Dietitian network to support dietitians with their prescribing journey. 

Laura leads a community dietetic team providing dietitian prescribing support and manages a team who deliver outpatient dietetics to all of Forth Valley via face to face and remote appointment covering nutritional support, enteral feeding, IBS and GI.

Laura is a committee member of the newly formed British Dietetic Association’s Prescribing Specialist Group, which supports and promotes prescribing within the profession. This group is also managing their four nation Independent Prescribing campaign to promote independent prescribing rights for dietetics. Supporting this strategy, she is a member of the Independent Prescribing Right Campaign Group to promote and strive for equal rights for all prescribers.

Janine Hill

Committee Member

Programme Lead for Non-Medical Prescribing at the University of Cumbria & an Advanced Nurse Practitioner.

Janine is the Programme Lead & Senior Lecturer for Non-Medical Prescribing (NMP) at the University of Cumbria (UoC). She has been programme lead for just over three years but has been involved in Primary Care programmes and Advanced Clinical Practice for the last six years. Janine is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner and led a team in General Practice for many years before leaving clinical practice.

Kat Hall

Committee Member

Associate Professor of Clinical Education

Kat is a committee member of the Association for Prescribers.  She is a pharmacist and independent prescriber.  She is active in national and international workstreams promoting the varied roles of the pharmacy workforce, including being a member of 2021 Task and Finish Group reviewing the Competency Framework for all Prescribers.  She has previously worked with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as hosts of ‘A Competency Framework for all Prescribers’, and ‘A Competency Framework for Designated Prescribing Practitioners’, to promote ways of using the frameworks to support prescribing competence.  Her current research activities focus on the experience of clinical practitioners working in academia and the effects of COVID-19 on the resilience, wellbeing and burnout of clinicians and academics.

She currently works for NHS England WT&E as the Southeast regional Head of School of Pharmacy.  She previously worked in academia as an Associate Professor of Clinical Education, leading a team to deliver a portfolio of programmes including inter-professional independent and supplementary prescribing, and advanced clinical practice.  Until the GPhC withdrew the programme, she was also involved in supporting the pharmacist supplementary to independent prescribing conversion module.

Sally Gilborson

Vice-chair of the Association for Prescribers

Non-Medical Prescribing Lead

Smartcare Electronic Health Record Champion

Sally is Non-Medical Prescribing Lead for the Northern Devon Healthcare Trust. She qualified as a Psychiatric Nurse in 1997 and after working for 6 months within an acute psychiatric unit, she decided to specialise in addictions. She worked in a therapeutic community for people with drug problems and then, in 1998, helped to set up an in-patient service for people requiring drug detoxification within an acute psychiatric unit in Plymouth. 

In 1999, she joined the Community Alcohol Service in Torbay and then moved to the Community Addiction Service in Exeter in 2004. She was appointed as Clinical Lead in Alcohol within the Exeter Community Addiction Service in 2007 and completed training as a Non-Medical Prescriber the following year. Whilst leading the alcohol service, she developed an alcohol liaison service and a comprehensive group work programme for clients with alcohol problems.

In 2010, she was appointed as Clinical Lead in Drugs within Devon Drug Service, where she was responsible for assuring clinical governance within an organisation undergoing significant redesign. She expanded the role of Non-Medical Prescribers within the service by identifying where they could be used to enhance service delivery, such as setting up titration clinics to speed up access to prescribing treatment.

She has been employed as Non-Medical Prescribing Lead for the Northern Devon Healthcare Trust since 2012. The Trust has a catchment population of nearly 500,000, and manages an acute hospital, 17 community hospitals and many health and social care community services.  The Trust employs around 100 Non-Medical Prescribers and one of the key challenges of her current role is to ensure that there is good governance across a broad range of practitioners. She chairs the Southwest Non-Medical Prescribing Leads Forum and is a NICE Medicines and Prescribing Centre Associate.

Professor Matt Griffiths

Committee Member

Matt has worked clinically and in development of both policy and standards for 30 years. He split his working week between clinical work in both primary care and pre-hospital care in the west country and consultancy/education & policy work around the UK.

His main passions are emergency care, medicines and patient safety aswell as resuscitation. He continues to advise organisations and individuals on medicine legislation and standards throughout the UK.
Matt works for several charities in unpaid roles including festival medical services (where he helps with policy development and education). Matt is now partially sighted. 

Simon Browes

Committee member

Simon is a senior clinical, operational and strategic leader in health and social care, with an expansive portfolio of expertise across professional and clinical leadership, quality governance, practice development, education and workforce transformation.

He has worked in consultant, executive and non-executive leadership roles in public sector, independent and not-for-profit organisations, academic and professional bodies, and established a reputation and track record of innovation, entrepreneurship and transformational leadership over more than twenty years. Simon is a passionate advocate for evidence-based policy and practice.

He is skilled at growing strategic partnerships at local, regional and national levels, shaping and influencing policy, practice, standards and guidance, leading organisational and system transformation.

Sam Sherrington

Committee member

Sam is a Registered Nurse, qualified Specialist Practitioner in the home, District Nursing and Nurse Prescriber.

Sam is Head of Year of the Nurse and Midwife 2020 and Head of Insulin Administration Programme at NHS England and NHS Improvement, having spent a number of years in NHS England national team formerly as Head of Nursing and Midwifery Strategy within the Nursing Directorate and Head of Stakeholder and Cultural Transformation, Future Focused Finance within the Finance Directorate.

Previously for eight years, Sam worked for the Northwest Strategic Health Authority, leading the delivery of the Department of Health Non-Medical Prescribing Programme across the region, then nationally for the Department of Health and internationally. 

Sam holds a number of national roles, including member of Council National Association for Primary Care and co-chair of European committee Prescribing Research in Medicines Management (PRIMM). Sam is well published and has won a number of awards, most notably ‘The Eileen Steele Memorial Award for Caring’. Sam holds an MSc in Nursing (Cancer), a post graduate Leadership and Management qualification, is a Top Directors NHS Leadership Academy graduate and is ILM level 7 Exec coach and mentor. She is a founding Director of Health and Education Cooperative. She is a board member for Trafford Clinical Commissioning Group, Greater Manchester. Sam is CEO of her own healthcare business.

She recently joined University of Surrey as an expert advisor to the national evaluation of independent prescribing by therapeutic radiographers and supplementary prescribing by dietitians. In her spare time Sam enjoys time with her young family.

Professor Nicola Carey

Chair of the Association for Prescribers

Nicola is Professor of Health Services Research and Head of the Centre for Rural Health Sciences at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Nicola is a qualified nurse and independent prescriber with over 25 years teaching and curriculum development experience in clinical and academic settings to undergraduate and postgraduate students at several UK institutes and in the US. 

Her research programme is designed to support the development and evaluation of innovation in clinical practice related to long-term conditions along with providing leadership in the field nationally and internationally. Prior to joining UHI, Nicola was Lead for the Long-Term Conditions and Ageing Cluster, and Reader in Long Term Conditions at the University of Surrey.

Since 2005 Nicola has been involved in numerous projects evaluating the implementation of non-medical prescribing, most recently leading an NIHR funded project exploring Dietitian Supplementary Prescribing and Independent Prescribing by Therapeutic Radiographers, the findings from which have provided support for revised prescribing regulation.

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