Jonathan Underhill on competence, professionalism, micro-credentialing and a bright pharmacist future

Well, it has been a while since we have recorded a podcast on Pharmacy in Practice so when I was recently in touch with friend of PIP Jonathan Underhill I suggested we have a chat.

And it was a fun, interesting and insightful conversation. We recorded the episode first thing on Monday morning after the England football defeat. We had a chat about Gareth Southgate's leadership and what the pharmacist profession can learn from him.

We also talked about how the various sectors of pharmacy have weathered the pandemic and where the profession goes next. Professionalism, competence, shared decision making and the future for pharmacists were also topics we covered.

Jonathan completed his pharmacy degree at Sunderland and has post-graduate qualifications from London and Liverpool Universities as well as the Institute for Learning and Development. He began his career as a hospital pharmacist in London before joining the National Prescribing Centre (NPC) in 1996. Working on MeReC publications and then developing an educational network/eLearning platform for evidence-based therapeutics and Information Mastery gave him a passion for understanding how clinicians keep up to date and help people make informed choices about their medicines. Now as a consultant clinical adviser for NICE, he inputs into those Clinical Guidelines that have a large medicines component, oversees outputs from the NICE Medicines team such as evidence summaries on new medicines and Antimicrobial Prescribing Guidelines as well as providing NHS access to the BNF. He also has an honorary post at the Keele School of Pharmacy teaching under and post-graduates as well as pursuing his research interests in Evidence-Informed Decision Making. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists and a qualified COVID-19 vaccinator. This gives him less time than he would like to devote to the passions in his life such as mindful walks in the Cheshire countryside with his soulmate Wor Bobby the Border Terrier, captaining his village cricket team, singing in his decidedly ordinary style with some incredibly talented rock musicians and his long-standing and largely unrewarded devotion to NUFC.