Mrs Katherine Pearson MPharm, PGDip, IP

Mrs Katherine Pearson

School of Pharmacy
Assistant Professor in Clinical Pharmacy

Contact details

Address
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Katherine joined the School of Pharmacy in Summer 2023 as an Assistant Professor in Clinical Pharmacy. She is teaching Applied Pharmacy Practice on the MPharm course. 

Katherine has an extensive background working as a clinical pharmacist in both primary and secondary care, with specialist roles in respiratory medicine and diabetes. She has a longstanding involvement in teaching and learning in a hospital setting with more recent experience teaching in higher education. 

Katherine has been an independent prescriber in a hospital setting. She also has a keen interest in the development of clinical reasoning skills, widening participation and interprofessional learning.

Qualifications

  • Practice Certificate in Independent Prescribing, University of Worcester, 2018 
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy Practice in Secondary Care, University of Bath, 2016 
  • Master of Pharmacy (first class honours), University of Manchester, 2012

Biography

Katherine is a registered pharmacist and started her career as a pre-registration pharmacist at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in 2012. She worked at the Trust for a further 6 years after qualifying as a pharmacist, and had specialist roles in renal medicine, diabetes, and infectious diseases. She then went on to work in a specialist pharmacist practitioner role in respiratory medicine where she gained and used her independent prescribing qualification. During her time as a hospital pharmacist, Katherine was responsible for teaching pharmacists and junior doctors on topics such as asthma, COPD and antimicrobial stewardship. 

Katherine then went on to work at NHS Birmingham and Solihull clinical commissioning group as a Diabetes pharmacist. Katherine sat on multidisciplinary team meetings to optimise medicines for diabetes patients, working in collaboration with local GPs, diabetes teams and secondary care diabetologists to improve outcomes for diabetes patients, and reduce secondary care referrals and clinic waiting times. Katherine also conducted diabetes medication reviews and diabetes quality and safety reviews at GP practices in the south Birmingham area. During this role she also helped develop medicines optimisation guidance for the management of heart failure in primary care. 

Following this post, Katherine went to work as lead pharmacist teacher practitioner at South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust and Aston University. In her role, Katherine was responsible for organising and running clinical hospital placements and teaching fourth year MPharm students from Aston University. Additionally, Katherine worked as a clinical pharmacist with responsibility for the training and development of junior pharmacists. 

She has a passion for widening participation and outreach, after developing and conducting a workshop for GCSE students to explain accessibility and affordability to higher education, during her undergraduate studies. Owing to her enthusiasm for education of both patients and healthcare professionals, she joined the University of Birmingham as an Assistant Professor in Clinical Pharmacy in summer 2023.

Teaching

Other activities

Registered pharmacist with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).