This week’s leadership message comes from Hannah Beba, Consultant Pharmacist for Diabetes, West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and Leeds Health and Care Partnership.

Consultant pharmacists: your partners in holistic healthcare within the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership

West Yorkshire has always invested in a diversity of clinical leadership. Recognising the growing complexity in diabetes management, a consultant pharmacist role was established to bring pharmacy expertise in delivering care and driving change across the diabetes healthcare system. I was delighted to secure this role three years ago. In the last few years, this role has adapted to our changing healthcare system and brings challenges, but huge reward in the opportunities to deliver beneficial impact for people living with diabetes. 

Consultant pharmacist roles require both the person and the consultant pharmacist role itself to be credentialled. This process is facilitated by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and is rigorous, giving guarantee to the health systems investing in consultant pharmacists that they will add value.

As a consultant pharmacist, my work aligns to four pillars of practice: expert clinical care, leadership, research, and education. Using these pillars, I’ll attempt to explain how I (and my fellow consultant pharmacist colleagues) are committed to building a better healthcare system for people.

Person-centred clinical care

Clinical legitimacy is essential for any clinical leadership role. The team responsible for designing my role mapped the requirement for clinical practice across all provider collaboratives including acute and community care, as well as within primary care. I have significant experience working in each of these sectors. Currently, my specialist clinical practice is at St James Hospital in Leeds where I deliver care for people living with type 1 diabetes and other atypical diabetes populations.

My specialist practice within Leeds Community Healthcare allows me to work with people living with more aggressive or complex type 2 diabetes. I deliver integrated clinics in primary care networks across Leeds, providing purposefully sampled interventions for those registered with our more deprived and diverse GP practices. Through these clinics I strive to upskill the primary care clinicians I work with and enable people living with diabetes to receive care closer to home (in some cases in their own home).

I have learned as much as I have taught doing this role, learning from our communities and the healthcare professionals dedicating their work to improve lives. I love working with our underserved communities, some of whom struggle to access specialist care through traditional routes for a variety of reasons including, for example, the fact they are employed on zero hours contracts and cannot take time off work to attend 9am-5pm appointments at hospital outpatient departments. By embedding my work in primary and community care, I help to bridge this gap for some - I am very proud I can do this.

My cross sector, whole diabetes clinical portfolio role and partnership working has established my clinical legitimacy as a clinical leader in Leeds and across West Yorkshire.

Leadership

Leadership is the circulatory system of the consultant pharmacist role and linking this with clinical legitimacy, means these roles deliver significant impact for the benefit of people living in our communities.

As a clinical leader both at Place and across West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership I work with a dynamic team of passionate and connected clinical leaders, programme managers and programme/service directors to make high quality care the reality in our healthcare systems.

Diabetes rarely exists in isolation. It is a hugely connected condition, linking closely to cardiovascular risk and established cardiovascular disease, renal health and beyond. Therefore, providing care to people living with diabetes in isolation or without considering the overlay with other conditions is not optimal care. In my leadership capacity, I have drawn leaders across Leeds Health and Care Partnership together over the last three years and, together, we now form the Leeds expert reference group for cardio-renal and metabolic medicine. The group has recently expanded its scope. Feeding into Place and West Yorkshire long-term condition boards, this fast-paced forum has informed care delivery through guidelines development, technology appraisal implementation, research participation and consultation, providing expert opinion – resulting in tangible benefits for people living with long-term conditions.

More focused diabetes work is also on the West Yorkshire system agenda, and I currently have the great pleasure of clinically leading our work around implementation of diabetes technology across our healthcare system. This multi-million-pound implementation plan demonstrates the commitment of West Yorkshire to innovation and investment in optimising outcomes for people living with long-term conditions. Diabetes technology facilitates people to self-care more effectively and has resulted in a level of collaboration between clinicians and people living with diabetes, and collaboration amongst clinicians, both across professions and across care settings, at a level I have not seen previously. This is taking us towards a more joined up diabetes care pathway in West Yorkshire.

Currently I am the co-chair of the Health Care Professional Advisory Committee for Diabetes UK, and I am a trustee of the Primary Care Diabetes Society. This national perspective helps me step back and see the bigger picture, to take inspiration from others and to allow me to connect our leading work in WY onto a national stage.

Research

It’s essential that we are rigorous in our approach to healthcare through evidence-based practice. Where evidence does not exist or is limited, we have an opportunity to be curious, innovate and research. The consultant role builds collaborations with academic institutions and can help secure grant funding. As co-author on multiple academic publications, I understand and have participated in a vast range of research methodologies. I also supervise research for a diverse group of professionals for the University of Warwick MSc in Diabetes Care, connecting me to an international community.

I have been lucky to recently advise on two large scale research projects funded through the NIHR connected to my speciality - looking at multiple long-term condition management and renal health. My career aspiration is to continue to develop myself as an applied clinical researcher.

Education

As consultant pharmacists, we are in essence only custodians of our roles - our time in these sought after posts must invest in creating the next generation of pharmacists. To ‘leave the jersey in a better place’ we need to provide quality education which equips individuals with the knowledge and skills to improve population health and be adaptable in an ever-changing NHS.

Consultant pharmacist are experts in medications, and within a specified field of practice, we are opinion leaders on a local and national landscape. I greatly enjoy educating nationally but also strongly believe in education closer to home, education which is tailored for our population and supported through clinical practice. MDTs, collaborative clinics, and supervision builds the confidence and competence for people to put things into practice.

I hope having read my blog you have a sense of the dynamic and holistic contribution my fellow consultant pharmacists and I bring to the Partnership. Working together with others across West Yorkshire, every day I try to add value and lead for a bright future for diabetes care. If you would like to know more about the consultant pharmacist role, please get in touch.

Thank you for reading,
Hannah​​​​​​​

@HannahBeba