Speakers

Biography

Vikki Knowles is a Respiratory Nurse Specialist with 26 years’ experience across primary and secondary care. She is currently employed by Guildford and Waverley CCG as a Respiratory Nurse Consultant, leading on respiratory projects reviewing management of patients with respiratory disease to ensure that this is in line with current best practice. She is a member of the Executive Board of PCRS and is a member of the Service Development Committee.

She represented Primary Care interests in the development of the British Thoracic Society Home Oxygen Guidelines, which were published in 2015, and contributed to the Home Oxygen Quality Standards due to be published this year. She was a member of the group looking at management of end-stage respiratory disease within the Department of Health Outcomes Strategy for COPD and contributed to the development of a good practice guide for asthma, through her role on the asthma advisory group between 2009 and 2013.

Biography

A Pharmacist, Behaviour Change Specialist and National Public Health Trainer, Darush Attar-Zadeh has specialised in the field of smoking cessation for 20 years.

He has presented at various national and international conferences (including PCRS, Clinical Pharmacy Congress, HPE Live, and UKNSCC) and was asked to help review the National Training Standards for Smoking Cessation

Darush has published more than 15 clinical papers, including information on respiratory inhaler devices and smoking cessation treatments in peer-reviewed journals.

He enjoys running, and raising money for respiratory and cardiac charities. One of his missions is to reduce health inequalities caused by tobacco, and he spends a lot of his time teaching in deprived locations across the UK.

Biography

Noel Baxter is an NHS GP in Southwark, London. He is the respiratory champion there, providing peer support to primary care colleagues and working with specialist respiratory colleagues within a population-based integrated respiratory service. He is the Clinical Director for Quality at NHS Southwark CCG.

He is the Chair of PCRS, leads the primary care workstream of the RCP National COPD Audit for England and Wales, and was a member of the recent NICE Clinical Guideline Group for Asthma Management. He is a Clinical Advisor to the British Lung Foundation. He was Co-Lead of the London Respiratory Strategic Clinical Network from 2010 until its end in September 2016, and the London Clinical Senate ‘Helping smokers quit’ delivery team programme, which was completed in August 2016.

Biography

Lisa is a Public Health Principal working in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Her role is across the Local Authority and the CCG, as she leads on the acute footprint and place-based commissioning for respiratory disease.

Lisa is an ex Practice Nurse and Specialist Respiratory Nurse in Secondary Care and the Community. Lisa was Programme Manager for The Yorkshire and Humber Respiratory Network, part of the national respiratory programme (2010-13),  a member of the BTS Asthma Standards group in 2013 and BTS Asthma care bundle working group.

Her current role in Public Health allows her to work across organisations on her three lead area of Respiratory Disease, Cancer and Smoking in Pregnancy, and gives her excellent access to data and information that can be used to inform transformation and improvement. She is currently working with the team leading on Primary Care Home implementation on workforce development and pathway review.

Biography

Sanjay has been a practice based pharmacist for the past ten years working in practices in Blackpool and North Lancashire. He is an Independent Prescriber and works across many Long Term Conditions (Asthma, COPD, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease). He is currently working as a Clinical Pharmacist at St Pauls Medical Practice in Blackpool.

Sanjay has also worked for Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale CCG, in the recent past gaining experience of working at a more strategic level and introducing pharmacists into general practice.

Sanjay has a very good understanding of the changing nature of general practice and the challenges it faces having worked in practices of varying size and in different locations. He has in depth knowledge of Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), Enhanced services in practice and EMIS systems.

Biography

Hetal Dhruve is a specialist respiratory pharmacist and is the Clinical Respiratory Lead for City and Hackney CCG. She works across the borough seeing high risk asthma and COPD patients, as well as supporting her colleagues in primary care to improve the quality of care for respiratory patients.

She has a clinical diploma and MSc in pharmacy practice and is a certified practitioner for spirometry testing and interpretation (Level 3). Additionally, as well as teaching the multidisciplinary team in City and Hackney, Hetal is part of the education committee at the PCRS and teaches undergraduate pharmacy students at Kings, pre-registration students at UEA and post graduate pharmacists and physiotherapists at UCL.

Biography

Dominika Froehlich-Jeziorek is a pharmacist from North West England.  

She is an independent prescriber, a lead for asthma and COPD in the practice and runs clinics for complex polypharmacy and chronic pain patients. She has extensive experience working at a community pharmacy and CCG level around medicines optimisation agenda. Over the years, she has acquired a very good understanding of the changing nature of general practice and the challenges it faces by working in practices of various sizes across Lancashire and Merseyside.

She is passionate about clinical education and is working within the pharmaceutical industry to develop and deliver high-quality and accessible training for primary care professionals. Her main mission is to improve outcomes for patients through the joint working at the neighbourhood level and the development of integrated services.​

Biography

After 16 years in mainstream NHS organisations, Tina Teague left NEW Devon CCG to take up the post of Chief Operating Officer for East Devon Health (EDH) in September 2016. EDH is a newly established federation in Devon with a membership of 13 practices, covering just over 120,000 patients. She is working closely with the Federation Chair to develop the federation into a well-established, viable organisation. Currently EDH’s main focus is to develop and deliver a range of projects on the use of technology to improve healthcare after a successful Estates and Technology Transformation Fund bid.

Tina’s experience includes senior commissioning in PCTs and CCGs. Tina has also worked in the acute sector, with previous operational roles in Cancer Services and Cardiology Services in local acute trusts. Before leaving the CCG, Tina led the transforming community services programme for the Eastern Locality in NEW Devon CCG.

Biography

Carol Stonham qualified as a Registered Nurse in 1986 in Bristol and has worked in Primary Care in Gloucestershire since 1990. Following 26 years working as a Nurse Practitioner in General Practice, she now works at Gloucestershire CCG on the Respiratory Clinical Programme Group as Senior Nurse Practitioner (respiratory), as well as running a locality-based FeNO service. She also enjoys teaching and mentoring.

She is an active member of PCRS, and is Vice Chair of the organisation and of the Education Committee. She is the Primary Care Nurse Representative for the National COPD Audit, UK Inhaler Group and UK Lung Cancer Coalition. She has also been awarded the Queen’s Nurse title and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours list in 2016 for Services to Nursing and Healthcare.

Biography

Fin Mc Caul is currently the Long-Term Conditions Lead for Bury CCG. He works with GPs, primary care providers and secondary care providers to improve the pathways for clinicians and outcomes for patients. The focus is on collaboration and integration, ensuring the commissioner gets best value and the patients get the best care.

Graduated from the Liverpool School of Pharmacy in 1986, he has practiced pharmacy for most of his career and is also Managing Director of Prestwich Pharmacy in Manchester. Fin was a past founder and Chairman of the Independent Pharmacy Federation and now represents Pharmacists on PSNC.

Fin was awarded fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 2016 for his service to pharmacy.