Bucks Specialist Pharmacist recognised for work combatting overuse of antibiotics

Tuesday, 14 December 2021 13:46

By Sam Dean

A Specialist Pharmacist in Buckinghamshire has been named one of the Pharmaceutical Journal’s Women to Watch 2021 for her work in tackling the overuse of antibiotics.

Claire Brandish, Specialist Pharmacist in Antimicrobials at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, headed up a programme to radically reduce the number of patients unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics by increasing the number of pharmacy-led ward rounds.

As a result, the number of patients who had their antibiotics stopped rose from 65 in 2017/2018 to 312 in 2020/2021.

Claire was described by the Pharmaceutical Journal as having “revolutionised the impact of antimicrobial stewardship at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.”

The overuse of antibiotics in recent years means they are becoming less effective and this has led to the emergence of "superbugs". These are strains of bacteria that have developed resistance to many different types of antibiotics.

Both the NHS and health organisations across the world are trying to reduce the use of antibiotics when there is no benefit to be gained in taking them and patients could risk experiencing side-effects.

More recently, Claire led the whole team in being redeployed to work in intensive care during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. She took it as an opportunity to forge better links with the intensive care and respiratory teams.

Jayne Ballinger, Chief Pharmacist at the Trust, said: “No matter what work or life demands of her, Claire rolls her sleeves up and will be the first in line to help resolve a problem, bringing humour and grit and getting to the end of the day and congratulating everyone else.”

[PHOTO: Claire Brandish]