School of Pharmacy and St James’s Hospital Forge Partnership

Posted on: 05 January 2015

The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Trinity College Dublin have signed a partnership agreement with St James’s Hospital, Dublin, which will pave the way for greater synergies and collaboration between the two institutions in high quality clinical care, education and research.

The agreement will further develop and strengthen the existing links between the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and St James’s Hospital through a range of activities, continuous learning and collaborative research projects which will harness the complementary skills of those working and learning in the two centres.

Undergraduate pharmacy students will be brought closer to St James’s resulting in more possibilities for shadowing and engaging with pharmacists across the range of their clinical, technical and managerial activities. In the postgraduate area collaboration will continue through the MSc in Hospital Pharmacy, the only course of its kind in Ireland and in which all of the Dublin Area Teaching Hospitals take part. It is also hoped that research students in biosciences and pharmacoepidemiology will have the opportunity for more joint working, particularly in practice and health services research. It is beneficial to those working in both practice research and bioscience research to review the problem sets that each other faces in order to inform and contextualise their research efforts effectively.

Speaking at the signing of the memorandum of understanding in St James’s Hospital today, Professor Anne Marie Healy, Head of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Trinity said: “The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Pharmacy Department in St James’s Hospital have had significant interactions over a long number of years in the areas of education, research and clinical care services. I very much welcome this memorandum of understanding, as it provides a strong public statement of the commitment of both parties, formalises our relationships and demonstrates our intention to continue to work together to strengthen our collaborations in the future”.

Director of Pharmacy, Veronica Treacy said: “St James’s Hospital welcomes the opportunity to formalise the collaborative relationship that has been developed with Trinity College Dublin's School of Pharmacy. The Pharmacy Department and its staff look forward to working on joint research projects to further enhance the practice of hospital pharmacy as well as continuing to contribute to the training of future pharmacists.“

The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and St James’s Hospital have been connected for over 30 years, from the time the School became part of Trinity College Dublin. At first, the interaction was limited to visits by undergraduates to the Department of Pharmacy, but this has grown over the years to include the co-ordination of the MSc in Hospital Pharmacy delivered by a pharmacist in St James’s who divides her time between the Hospital and the School.