Professor of Pharmacy Practice
Paul is a qualified pharmacist and has a background as a practicing community pharmacist. His research interests centre on self-care pathways that maximise patient outcomes especially those that involve medicines optimisation and the role of the pharmacist. As his background is as a community pharmacist he has a keen interest in investigating and developing their role. Specifically, this centres on their diagnostic ability in being facilitators of self-care, increasing their prominence in public health (e.g. healthy living pharmacies), and establishing new services or improving patient care pathways (e.g. hospital discharge in to the community). As an educator of pharmacy students, he also has a keen interest in professional development and formation of professional identity in pharmacy students. Paul has researched and written widely on this subject, including publication of two books on differential diagnosis for pharmacists and nurses. He currently supervises 13 PhD students – all of which are part-time and work as pharmacists. He is involved in other funded projects, such as developing better stroke care in the community, tackling deprescribing safely and using decision support aids to improve antibiotic prescribing. Paul is a member of the Steering Group and is a co-investigator on the project. Paul also acts as the pharmacy expert. https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/persons/paul-rutter
