Dr Trudi McIntosh

Impacting education and communities

Trudi is the course leader for MSc Advanced Pharmacy Practice, including the Pharmacist Independent Prescribing module. Demand for this important commercialisation activity continues to increase and Trudi meets regularly with representatives from Health Boards, NHS Education for Scotland and others to steer the development of pharmacist prescribing education, training and practice to ensure that provision continues to meet the needs of governments and the profession.

Trudi also contributes more widely, most recently at a General Pharmaceutical Council Consultation on new standards for pharmacist prescribing, as well as working with other external partners to enhance pharmacist prescribers’ clinical assessment and consultation skills further.

Trudi completed her PhD in 2017, exploring social and cognitive influences on prescribing decisions among non-medical prescribers. As a direct consequence of her studies, Trudi was asked to give a keynote address on Pharmacist prescribing: lessons from the Scottish experience at the West African Postgraduate College of Pharmacists’ Scientific Symposium in Monrovia, Liberia. Pharmacist prescribing is seen as one way to address the region’s enormous healthcare challenges and Trudi was able to provide advice and guidance to many, both at the event and upon her return. She hopes to build on her experiences in Liberia and as a volunteer on a medical vessel on Lake Victoria, Tanzania.

Sustained continuous improvement in teaching

Trudi has extensive experience of supervising undergraduate and postgraduate research and has several publications to her name as a result of this supervision and her own research. Her key areas of sustained focus are pharmacist and other non-medical prescribing and the use of multi-compartment compliance aids, where research has identified a lack of clarity around decision-making regarding the allocation of these resources.

Enhancing pharmacist prescribers’ clinical skills is a strong focus for Trudi and for the profession. Trudi has liaised with colleagues in her own School and in the School of Nursing and Midwifery to develop an additional assessment of history taking and clinical assessment skills as part of the pharmacist prescribing module.

Thanks to the success of the pharmacist prescribing module which Trudi leads, the university has been able to engage the services of an additional three experienced pharmacist prescribers, each contributing 100 hours as face to face and on-line tutors. Trudi provides extensive induction and coaching for each of them.

Most students on the pharmacist prescribing module work full time and have other commitments. Adding Masters’ level study and learning in practice is challenging. Trudi and her colleagues pride themselves on the support they offer. Word of this student-centred support spreads and Trudi believes this is one reason for our success in recruitment.

Paving the way forward

Over the last several years, Trudi has contributed to the NHS Grampian/RGU annual non-medical prescribing conference and last year gave a keynote address on her PhD research, enhancing the reputation of the university in this field and strengthening working partnerships.

She has a clear path for further contributions in our new PGDip/MSc Advanced Pharmacy Practice course, starting in 2019 which will be open to UK-registered pharmacists wishing to train as prescribers. Some of the elective modules in this course will be offered inter-professionally with students from the School of Nursing and Midwifery, a first for the university.  Trudi hopes to play a key role in driving developments in this course and in the MSc Clinical Pharmacy Practice, open to pharmacists from the UK and across the world, thus disseminating best practice to the benefit of the profession and communities.