New Council Members 2022

Welcome to the following new members of CMHP Council who joined the team in November 2022:

Jaspreet Sohal, Chief Pharmacist at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust  

Since becoming Chief Pharmacist in 2018, Jaspreet has expanded the pharmacy service at Bradford significantly, with new and innovative posts for pharmacists and technicians across the Trust. She has successfully implemented electronic prescribing and medicines administration into all inpatient areas and is passionate about digital innovation in the medicines arena. She is the Trust lead for improving physical health for people with serious mental illness and is currently working on a system level programme of work to reduce health inequalities for this group of people. She is co-chair of the Trust NICE Guideline Steering Group and leading the Trust into becoming Smoke Free in 2023.

Jaspreet teaches mental health topics on the University of Bradford Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy and is partnering with the University on the new HEE Community Mental Health Pharmacist Pathway.

Jaspreet has taken on the Communications portfolio on behalf of Council.

Beryl Navti, lead pharmacist for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT).

Beryl has over 22 years of pharmacy practice spanning across community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, academia, and mental health. She has completed masters degrees in pharmaceutical technology and clinical pharmacy as well as the certificate in psychiatric therapeutics and diploma in psychiatric pharmacy. 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.

Katie Evans, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board

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

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.

Katie has taken on the role of Consultations Lead for the CMHP Council.

Louise Russell, Medicines management technician specialist, Bucks community teams, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

Louise 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 community pharmacy. She 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. She was then offered the position full time and she 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.  

Louise is the CMHP Council’s Pharmacy Technician Lead.

To read the fill profiles of our new Council members, please visit CMHP Council - Meet the Team!