Zakia is a community pharmacist by background and worked in community pharmacy before undertaking her PhD. Her interests include medication adherence in older people, and her doctoral work aimed to investigate the characteristics of oral solid dosage forms that contribute to patient centric medicines. This involved undertaking a mixed methods systematic review, qualitative interviews with older people, carers and health and social care professionals, and 3D printing.
Zakia has had experience in conducting online mixed methods surveys, researching the role of community pharmacy in managing skin conditions. This survey led to further work in this area, including a multistage stakeholder research prioritisation exercise.
Zakia has also had experience in co-designing an intervention to improve the post discharge care of older people, specifically using experience-based co-design. This method was used to create a tool that improves communication between older people and their GP practice after discharge from hospital.
Zakia is currently working on the PURSUIT study, involving qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus groups with an aim to create a behaviour change intervention that improves the identification of work-related asthma in primary care.