Pharmacy Practice

Our PhD/MPhil Pharmacy Practice programme enables you to undertake a research project that will improve the practise of pharmacy, the prescribing of medicines to optimise therapy and how patients take their medicines. There are 3 working centres in Pharmacy Practice which include the Centre for Pharmacy Workforce Studies chaired by Dr Ellen Schafheutle , Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety chaired by Prof Darren Aschroft , and Prescribing and Patient Safety chaired by Dr Penny Lewis. There is a lot of interplay between the centres so there is maximum impact to the patient and to the research. We work with patient groups, prescribers, and pharmacists to gather the necessary information to conduct research, but also healthcare databases to maximise the study population size for robust results. We have a diverse skill base including clinical and community pharmacists, biostatisticians, epidemiologist, qualitative specialist researchers and health economists.

A research project is usually supervised by 2 co-supervisors that could be from different types of research backgrounds, but with this combination a unique and blended research experience is gained by the student. Research projects include pharmacoepidemiology studies, drug utilisation research, regulations, patient and medicines safety, organisational systems, transfer of care and disease specific research.

Our PhD research projects in Pharmacy Practice for international students primarily involve evaluation of practice and drug policy, pharmacoepidemiology using anonymous data, evaluating practice from already collected data or data collected by a third party or quantitative and qualitative analysis of national clinical data sets. These projects involve clinical knowledge and judgement and gaining skills in database management, analysis of large dataset and thematic analysis. All of these projects do not involve the international professional student having direct contact with NHS patients. Unfortunately, the NHS regulations on clinical contact with patients (including medical notes) is very strict and reserved for UK registered pharmacists and practitioners. Therefore a PhD in Clinical Pharmacy is not available to students wanting to attend the University of Manchester for this programme of study.