CMHP Council

Karen is a Senior Pharmacist at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. As Principal Pharmacist for Education, Training & Development this role combines her specialism in mental health with her strong interest in education and training. She is also pharmacist for the Learning Disability assessment & treatment unit and provides training & audit visits for the Trusts learning disability care homes.

Karen was elected to the CMHP council in October 2016. She has undertaken the roles of research and education lead prior to being appointed Vice President in November 2021. Most recently Karen has been one of the group of CMHP council members working on the approach to joint credentialing for CMHP and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Karen qualified as a pharmacist in 2007 having undertaken her pre-registration training at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust. She continued to work there as a resident pharmacist where she completed her general clinical pharmacy training. With the opportunity to rotate through a variety of settings she was able to work in mental health and see how valued pharmacists are as part of the mental health multidisciplinary team. In 2009 she was appointed to a specialist pharmacist post and has since had experience in a variety of mental health specialties i.e. acute adult, intensive care, eating disorders, CAMHS, rehabilitation, older adults and most recently learning disabilities. In 2013 she was appointed as Advanced Specialist Pharmacist & Education and Training Lead at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and also undertook an MSc in Pharmacy Practice at UCL. This included developing her Advanced Practice portfolio which led to her successful Royal Pharmaceutical Society Faculty submission, being accredited at Stage II, in 2015.

Karen can be found on X at @KarenPharm.

Nicola is the deputy chief pharmacist at Essex University Partnership NHS Foundation Trust  having managed a specialist mental health Medicines Information service for over 5 years and been the lead mental health pharmacist in North East London.  Nicola is keen to expand knowledge of mental health  across sectors and has provided a number of webinars and articles aimed at increasing pharmacists knowledge around a range of mental health topics including, ethnicity, perinatal mental health, dementia and schizophrenia.

Her interest in psychiatry started as a student where she chose schizophrenia for a specialist subject and then grew when she first worked closely with a mental health nurse in an intermediate care service and then was asked to write a guide on the use of antidepressants in renal impairment for UKMI.  The need to fully appreciate psychopharmacology and the use of pharmaceutical knowledge drew her in as she could see how pharmacists could make a real difference.   She started working in psychiatry in the south west 10 years ago and hasn’t looked back.

Nicola has been involved in a number of projects spanning different areas such as introducing a physical formulary across a mental health trust, updating a training manual for pharmacists entering into psychiatric pharmacy and improving clinicians and patients access to resources for medication.

Recently she has become interested in the impact of ethnicity on mental health treatments and outcomes and is currently involved in looking at updating older research on mental health treatments across different ethnicities and is part of a working group to look at reducing restrictive interventions and improving early access to services to improve management of patients from all backgrounds.

Outside of work Nicola is a keen baker, often making cakes with her rather active toddler and loves to travel having taken 6 months out to circumnavigate south America in her early career and has had a number of trips to Africa.

Roz is the Chief Pharmacy Officer and Deputy Registrar for the General Pharmaceutical Council, and a National Clinical Advisor for the UK Addiction Healthcare Mission’s overdose detection, response and intervention feasibility competition. Prior to this she held senior leadership roles in national UK third sector providers and also worked in secondary care NHS services and community pharmacy. She is a credentialed CMHP member and has provided professional coaching and mentoring for pharmacy professionals working in a variety of sectors, including those undertaking Consultant pharmacist credentialing. As a senior accredited RCGP trainer for their Drug and Alcohol Certificates, she currently leads the Part 1 Drugs course and has experience of providing training for a variety of audiences and for several organisations including the NHS, Local Authorities and private providers. She has acted as an expert advisor for various organisations and has been part of several committees including Drug Science’s Scientific Committee and the Medicines, Ethics and Practice Advisory Panel. She is currently completing a Doctorate focusing on the misuse of over the counter and prescription medication and has contributed to online resources, national publications, and textbook chapters. Roz has been awarded numerous prizes for her research and innovation work, co-leading the UK’s first Home Office licensed drug checking service and implementing the first pharmacy technician led on-site community dispensary embedded within community drug and alcohol treatment services.

Tara is currently the Lead Pharmacist for the Mental Health Network at Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust.

Tara qualified as a Pharmacist in 2005 and has since worked in a variety of roles, including that of a rotational hospital Pharmacist, Community Pharmacy Manager and Urgent Care Pharmacist before starting her career within Mental Health.

Tara was first introduced to Mental Health Pharmacy whilst a pre-registration trainee, during which she undertook a short placement with her current employer LSCFT. Whilst the immediate years post-registration saw Tara gain more generalist experience it was always her aim to find her way to becoming a Pharmacist within Mental health.

In 2009 Tara secured her first position as a Junior Pharmacist with then LCFT working on the psychiatric inpatient unit in Blackpool. During her initial years as a Mental Health Pharmacist Tara gained experience on adult , older adult and psychiatric intensive care unit wards.

Completion of the Aston Diploma provided underpinning knowledge to support growing experience within adult mental health. As clinical experience grew Tara progressed within the organisation initially to an Advanced Pharmacist position providing clinical Pharmacy support to a variety of Community Mental Health Teams and Urgent Care Mental Health Teams. After qualifying as an Independent Non-Medical Prescriber in 2011 Tara established a Pharmacist led prescribing clinic within two Fylde CMHT’s and later providing prescribing support into Mental Health Single Point of Access.

Over more recent years Tara has taken on the role of Deputy Lead Pharmacist then Lead Pharmacist firstly providing professional leadership to the Children and Young Peoples Network (CAMHS, Eating Disorder Services and Early Intervention Services) before taking on her current post as Lead Pharmacist with the Mental Health Network.

Tara is passionate about supporting patients to make informed decisions around their treatment, especially women of childbearing potential. Tara enjoys taking the lead on Quality Improvement initiatives within her organisation and has most recently contributed to focussed improvement of quality and safety of care following the use of rapid tranquillisation.

Tara is also a Mum to three boys who are all very keen footballers. So outside of work of both an evening and weekend she is most likely braving the elements at pitch sides up and down the country.

Tara considers it to be a great privilege to have been co-opted to serve on the council and is looking forward to contributing to the highly valued work carried out by the CMHP

Michael qualified as a pharmacist in 2000. He first worked at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for two years as a resident pharmacist where he did a three month rotation in mental health. He then went on to join Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust where he has worked ever since 2002. He has rotated round various mental health specialities including general adult, psychiatric intensive care, forensics, eating disorders, CAMHS, learning disabilities and older adult psychiatry. However, he has spent the last 14 years in general adult psychiatry. His role for the last 10 years has been Lead Pharmacist for Medicines Information, Research and Audit. In 2014, he finally completed his portfolio, sat the viva and became a credentialed member of CMHP.

Outside of work, Michael enjoys fell running, mountaineering and spending time with his young family.

Petra Brown qualified as a pharmacist in 1992 working initially as a resident pharmacist at Salford Royal hospital before moving to Withington Hospital in 1995 where she was asked to temporarily cover the mental health wards. It was immediately clear how much a pharmacist could benefit the quality of care and 27 years on she has moved Trusts and roles but never out of mental health. She has always been a member of UKPPG and CMHP enjoying the professional and personal support the organisation offers.

Petra is now Chief Pharmacist at Pennine Care NHS FT having been the Greater Manchester Mental Health Medicines Optimisation Strategic Pharmacist from 2017 to 2019 and Chief Pharmacist at Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust 2000-2017.

Petra has particularly enjoyed developing and expanding her pharmacy team and services working with other providers and commissioners to improve medicines optimisation locally and strategically. She has supported and published a range of research including managing the early introduction of medicines for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, improving mental health medication safety and the use of clozapine and second generation antipsychotics in schizophrenia. The current research portfolio is particularly focussed on medicines safety in mental health and prison healthcare in conjunction with Manchester University. Recent quality improvement projects include shared decision making, implementing NICE guidance, learning from prescribing errors, medicines reconciliation in prison services and improving our service users physical health monitoring.

Petra has three children, a very giddy dog and house in Austria which keep her active. She loves walking, skiing, swimming and speaking German with her extended family.

Beryl is the lead pharmacist for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT). She has over 22 years of pharmacy practice spanning across community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, academia, and mental health.

Over the years, Beryl completed master’s degrees in pharmaceutical technology and clinical pharmacy as well as the certificate in psychiatric therapeutics and diploma in psychiatric pharmacy.

Her first role in mental health pharmacy was in education and training.  As an education and training pharmacist, Beryl was involved in the transition of pre-registration pharmacists, technicians, and pharmacy assistants from receiving the LPET (London Pharmacy Education and Training) to taking training run by the Health Education East of England. This involved meeting at senior level to determine competencies and training objectives for different skill levels within the pharmacy department to ensure a seamless transition for those that were caught in the middle of the change.

She went on to work across many other mental health specialties including medium secure forensic units, older adult wards, psychiatric intensive care and now CAMHS.

Beryl is a qualified assessor in assessing competency in workplace and worked with lead pharmacy technicians in East of England to develop and standardise assessment methods to provide an all-rounded curriculum and training program for pre-registration pharmacy technicians.

With a passion for teaching and research, Beryl went on to undertake a doctorate degree in pharmacy practice and conducted extensive research on the role of community pharmacists in the pharmaceutical care of people living with dementia in care homes, whilst running learning in practice sessions for undergraduate pharmacy students.

Over the last year, she has worked with the Centre for Postgraduate Pharmacy Education (CPPE) to develop course content for the culturally competent communication e-learning programme and to review course content for their mental health e-learning modules. She is an executive member of the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (NAPICU), and currently working with this organisation to develop a proposal for a nationwide scoping of how children with acutely disturbed behaviour are managed in non-mental health settings.

As a credentialed member of the CMHP, Beryl is looking forward to leveraging her extensive experience into developing pharmacists in the mental health specialty and being the first pharmacist to be appointed in a CAMHS consultant pharmacist role, she is currently building a portfolio for credentialing with the RPS, and is using her skills to improve outcomes for children with mental health problems.

There is greater reliance on medicines to ensure independence and good quality of life in the UK and pharmacists are experts in medicines. Beryl is keen to be involved in developing pharmacists and pharmacy technicians for the future who fully engage in delivering not only a transactional role, but also a transformational role in helping people get the best out of their medicines.

Outside of work, Beryl is a busy wife and mum of three. She enjoys watching football and chick flicks and loves partying and adventure. She has a bucket list she is steadily working through!

After qualifying as a pharmacist, Kiran started her career in community pharmacy and then very swiftly moved to a large acute hospital in Liverpool as a basic grade pharmacist. Before committing to doing the general clinical diploma, Kiran decided to give mental health pharmacy a try, and agreed to cover a colleague’s maternity leave post for 6 months in a neighbouring mental health trust.

That was 20 years ago……and she never did go back to the acute trust; she loved the real MDT approach to patient-care and value her role provided to patients. So when offered a substantive post, she jumped at the chance to stay and establish herself as a mental health pharmacist. There, she gained a wide range of experience, covering inpatient services for older adults, adult acute, substance misuse and rehabilitation specialities. She completed both the psychiatric certificate and diploma at Aston University during that time and was fortunate to gain experience in and help develop education and training for patients, carers, other healthcare professionals, and participated in undergraduate and postgraduate psychiatric pharmacy teaching at John Moore’s University. She has been a UKPPG and CMHP member since 1997.

In 2004, a re-location “down south” took her to Berkshire and a job as lead clinical pharmacist (followed by deputy chief pharmacist) at the mental health trust there. Many challenges arose during this time; a trust merger with community health services that required significant change management responsibilities and the need to lead an expanding multidisciplinary clinical pharmacy service. It also allowed many opportunities to gain additional funding and grow her clinical pharmacy team, by initiating new pharmacist roles within CMHTs, perinatal, EIP and psychiatric liaison services, and working closely with the School of Pharmacy at Reading University where she lead the development of two specialist mental health teacher practitioner pharmacist roles.

Last year, whilst undertaking a leadership masters degree, Kiran was appointed as Chief Pharmacist at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Although the challenges in her new post are quite different to those in her previous role, she continues to be an advocate for developing both clinical and leadership skills of her team members and believes in empowering and enabling all levels of staff to be caring, inclusive leaders in their own right.

Any spare time is taken up running around after her two young children, cooking, baking, cycling, singing (in the shower) and dancing (around her handbag!)

Chief Pharmacist, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust (July 2018 – present)

Abiola has over 19 years’ experience as a qualified pharmacist with substantial experience in both clinical therapeutics and management. He has worked in various settings – acute hospitals, community and currently in mental health. He has experience in maximising the impact of medicines, improving patient outcomes by espousing the medicines optimisation mantra and managing pharmacy staff to provide high quality pharmaceutical services; he provides leadership around medicines management at a trust-wide level. He has a passion for his speciality and a burning ambition to positively influence both his speciality and the wider profession at all levels – local, regional and national level.

After completing his Pharmacy degree at Liverpool John Moores University, Abiola went on to complete a diploma in clinical pharmacy and has worked as a clinical pharmacist in various acute hospitals and in different specialities. He has has also worked in various positions in community pharmacy gaining valuable experience and supporting excellent patient care services.

He has a passion for patient care and mental health is a key interest. With this in mind, he completed the Certificate in Psychiatric Therapeutics from Aston University (Merit). He worked as an Advance Pharmacist in Medicines information where he set up a Medicines information department at RJ & AH NHS Foundation Trust. Further to this, he worked as a Lead clinical pharmacist in Mental health at CWP NHS Foundation Trust, where he was responsible for a locality and accountable for the delivery of clinical pharmacy services in this part of the Trust. He provided a clinical role to a number of wards, and he managed a number of staff in order to deliver the service. He held a number of trust-wide roles, such as Medicines management lead, and was an integral member of the Medicines Management Group.

Moving to a Deputy Chief Pharmacist role at Birmingham and Solihull MH NHS Foundation Trust, Abiola had responsibility for the day to day management of the pharmacy services to the Trust.  He worked with his management team to ensure they had the appropriate skill mix within the department that is commensurate to the workload and meet expected delivery of key performance indicators.

Abiola is currently the Chief Pharmacist at SHSC NHS Foundation, where he oversees the pharmacy department and has responsibility for medicines optimisation and management within the Trust.

He has taught core trainees on the MRCPsych course in the North West and in South Yorkshire.

Within mental health, he has a breath of experience working in eating disorders services, Psychiatric intensive care units (PICU), acute adult wards and also in dementia services. He is interested in leadership and has completed the Mary Seacole program in Healthcare Leadership. He has also completed and been awarded the Nye Bevan award in Executive Leadership

Abiola enjoys playing the guitar, and having a good game of scrabble. He is a qualified level one FA football coach and managed a youth football team for 6 years. He is currently on a sabbatical.

Professor Wheeler was awarded her PhD late in her professional career in 2009 whilst working full time and followed a non-traditional career path. She was founder and director of the highly successful Clinical Research and Resource Centre in a NZ public health service. Amanda is now Professor of Mental Health at the Menzies Health Institute Queensland, School of Pharmacy & Medical Sciences at Griffith University.

Her passion for health reform and equitable healthcare, especially regarding mental health and well-being, has been a key driver in her research. Prior to her academic career, Amanda worked as a pharmacist in hospital and community settings in NZ & the UK, where she lived for five years. These varied working environments stimulated her interest in the safe and appropriate use of medicines and facilitated her success in securing multiple, highly funded research projects. She has led a range of federally funded research projects that have contributed to improving health service provision and policy through legislative change and developing person-centred, goal-oriented medication management services to improve health outcomes and quality and safe use of medicines.

She is currently leading the co-design of the national roadmap for the ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation. She is Chief Investigator for the development of guidelines integrating evidence-based exercise therapy within mental health teams and increasing workforce capability and capacity with cost-effective approaches (MOVEMENT), and has led many research studies, including 5 large multi-state projects funded by the Australian Government Department of Health.  Most recently this has involved community pharmacists working with consumers with severe mental illness to improve physical health and medication problems (PharMIbridge RCT: 2020-2022); and a study to test the feasibility of a culturally responsive medication review service, delivered by pharmacists, integrated with Aboriginal health services in rural, remote and urban settings (IMeRSe: 2017-2020).

Professor Wheeler has travelled extensively and is a bit of a ‘foodie’ and actively seeks opportunities to extend her knowledge – and her tastebuds!

Read more at Griffith Experts.

Yogita Dawda is a Consultant Pharmacist in mental health at Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust and a credentialed CMHP member. She acts as a QNWA peer reviewer for the Royal College of Psychiatrists and is a panel member of professional experts for Rethink Mental Illness Charity.

Yogita is also a lecturer at Aston University for the independent prescribing course and leads the mental health curriculum. In addition, she is an external assessor on their Postgraduate Diploma in Psychiatric Pharmacy.

Yogita has had several publications in peer reviewed journals and presented her research at a number of national and international conferences.

She was a member of the Department of Health Physical Health, Mental Health working group and co-developer of two resources to support mental health nurses take positive actions to improve patients’ physical health and reduce the unwanted variation highlighted in The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

Yogita has led on the implementation of ‘Point of care testing and physical health monitoring in clozapine clinics’ which was finalist in two national awards and presented at various national conferences. She has also led on the coproduction of a physical health monitoring booklet to support patients taking clozapine which was highly commended by MHRA.

Her special interests and research include using technology to improve patient safety, reducing preventable medicines-related (re)admissions, clozapine and pharmacogenomics.

Outside of work, Yogita enjoys skiing and going to the gym.

She can be found on Twitter @DawdaYogita

Orla qualified as a pharmacist in 1998, having completed her BPharm in Trinity college Dublin.  She spent several years working as a community pharmacist in Dublin and Melbourne, before moving to the UK in 2002 where she started working for Oxford Mental Health as a locum pharmacist.  She became quickly absorbed in the fascinating world of psychiatric pharmacy and has been working for Oxford Health since then.

During her career as a psychiatric pharmacist, Orla has worked on CAMHS, PICU, Adult, Forensic and Older Adult wards, learning from the wider multi-disciplinary team and a close team of pharmacy colleagues.  She completed the Aston diploma in 2007 and went on to achieve CMHP credentialing in 2008.

In 2009 she became the Lead Research Pharmacist and established a well-respected clinical trials team within her department.  She continues to work closely with researchers at the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre and has helped to produce guidelines on managing patients with mental illness during the pandemic.  She also collaborates with researchers in the Bennett Institute who manage the Opensafely and Openprescribing databases and has undertaken research to explore prescribing trends of psychotropics.  She teaches undergraduate medical students and trainee psychiatrists in Oxford University’s Department of psychiatry and is a presenter on Psych 1 and an external assessor on the Dip Psych course at Aston.

Orla qualified as an independent prescriber in 2018 and worked as an NMP for several years with the local Early Intervention Service.  She has published a paper and presented lectures on the value of NMP pharmacists in managing mental illnesses.

Orla is currently working on a project to improve psychotropic prescribing in learning disability across her local Integrated Care System which has focussed her attention on how we specialist pharmacists can support our colleagues in primary care to deliver great care to our patients.   She is currently learning to be more skilled as a learning disabilities pharmacist.

Outside of working life, Orla enjoys a busy family life, with three children – four if you count the dog!   She loves running, yoga, hanging out in or on (SUP) the local river and generally anything that involves a drink and a chat.

Medicines management technician specialist, Bucks community teams, Oxford Health Foundation Trust.

Louise started working in Pharmacy as a teenager working as a Saturday Girl before going full time after making the decision that full time education was not her desired pathway. She then trained as a Pharmacy Technician and later ACT (Accuracy Checking Technician) gaining hospital experience at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford working sessional weekends whilst working full time in the community Pharmacy.

Louise moved to mental health Pharmacy in 2014 where she was working as a Medicines Management Technician in an acute male ward and learning disability wards. After one year she was offered a secondment for a pilot medicine management technician imbedded within the community teams. Louise enjoyed working within the multidisciplinary team and was delighted when they offered her the position full time and has been practicing in this role ever since.

During her time working within community and ward based Mental Health Louise has participated in service improvement and NHSi projects around physical and mental health, while being part of the implementation of physical health reviews within community health teams for the trust where she continues to support the physical health leads in delivering their reviews.

Louise is phlebotomy trained and works in the clozapine clinic for one of the hospitals within the trust.  She loves her varied role and patient contact which has given her experience of a more clinical role within her practice as a senior Pharmacy Technician.

In her spare time Louise also dedicates herself to the role of Pharmacy Technician within the British Army as a Reservist Pharmacy Technician having reached the rank of Corporal. A great deal of her spare time is taken up with training weekends, operational readiness exercises, green soldiering, and general soldier duties. She has gained qualifications in instructing, combat medical technician and summer mountain leader.

Louise has two jack Russell’s and a sphynx cat, so any remaining free time is spent adventuring with her four legged friends.

Katie qualified as a pharmacist in 2009 initially working as a rotational hospital pharmacist. In 2013, she became a specialist mental health pharmacist and never looked back.

Her interest in mental health developed early in her career whilst completing a mental health rotation as part of the clinical pharmacy therapeutics diploma at Cardiff University.

Katie has worked across several health boards within S.E. Wales and various mental health specialities including CAMHS, acute adult (PICU and general), rehabilitation, older persons, low – medium secure forensic and learning disabilities.

Whilst Katie’s roles have often provided steep learning curves, she loves the challenge, variation, fast pace, and wealth of colleagues she has grown to know professionally and personally.

Katie completed the psychiatric therapeutics certificate and diploma with Aston University passing both with distinction and she was thrilled to receive the Helen Tennent Award, for highest overall performance in 2020.

More recently, Katie worked as an external assessor for Aston University on the psychiatric therapeutics programme and is an ongoing tutor for the independent prescribing course with Cardiff University.

Her current role consists of working as a prescriber in a community mental health team and addiction service alongside her hospital duties. The latter includes covering inpatient acute adult and low-secure forensics. She is also the chair of a medicines management group, specifically for clozapine treatment.

Outside of work, she is a busy mum, wife and keen DIY’er with a love of tilling.

Through completing her undergraduate degree at Aston it may have been inevitable that Ciara developed an interest in Mental Health. It always struck her as an area in which clinicians have the opportunity to really engage with and think about the patient as an individual and what treatment would suit their needs best rather than which slot they fit into in an algorithm.

Ciara initially worked as a relief pharmacist in community, completing her Certificate in Psychiatric Pharmacy before obtaining a mental health post in Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust (later Lancashire Care Trust) in 2004. There she was able to work on wards including Acute Assessment Units for Adult, Elderly, and Dementia patients, a PICU, a Low Secure Unit, an Alcohol Detoxification Unit, and a Tier 4 CAMHS unit. She also worked with Supported Housing, Adult and Elderly CMHTs, CRHT, AOT and EIS Teams. Whilst in Cumbria/Lancashire Ciara attended Psych 1 and 2, completed her Diploma, and obtained her non-medical prescribing qualification.

Ciara took a minor detour into physical health working on a Respiratory ward in Derry in 2012 before returning to her native Dublin working in Private Mental Health Hospitals which she says has been quite a change from both the NHS and the UK!

She obtained full credentialled membership of the CMHP in 2013 and is now Chief Pharmacist at St Patrick’s University Hospital in Dublin, with special interests in developing Medicines Reconciliation services and improving the appropriate use of Benzodiazepines. Ciara won the Hospital Pharmacy News 2014 Award for Excellence in Patient Safety. She completed her MSc in 2015 and presented her research on the impact of pharmacist counselling on the knowledge of clozapine patients at CMHP conference 2016. She has had the honour to serve several roles on Council including as Registrar, and President.

Ciara enjoys learning and helping others to learn and has been involved in developing and delivering staff training programs and in developing Patient Information Leaflets. She is passionate about working in Mental Health and finds working directly with patients and clinical colleagues to be the most rewarding part of her job. Ciara has always found the CMHP to be an invaluable resource for support and information and is delighted to be involved in an organisation which does so much to progress the overall quality of care in mental health.

Outside of work and study she says she loves cooking, Pilates and new shoes!