Position: Professor of Primary Care Pharmacy
Tel / Fax: +44 28 90 972147
E-mail: c.hughes@qub.ac.uk
Personal
Carmel is Professor of Primary Care Pharmacy and Head of the School of Pharmacy, Queen's University of Belfast. Carmel qualified as a pharmacist in 1988 and received her Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1991.
Previously, she was appointed to a part-time lectureship in pharmacy and seconded to the Eastern Health and Social Services Board (Northern Ireland) as a prescribing advisor, where she provided prescribing support and advice to general practitioners.
Research
Carmel’s main research interests are long-term care for older people, rational prescribing, the interface between general practitioners and pharmacists, and evidence-based health care. Her expertise lies in health services research methodology ranging from qualitative techniques through to randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews.
Carmel is an Associate Editor for Pilot and Feasibility Studies, the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy. She is also an Associate Editor for the EPOC (Effective Practice and Organisation of Care) review group, part of the Cochrane Collaboration. Carmel is a member of the Commissioned Research Review Panel in the Health Services and Delivery Research stream of the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR). She is the immediate past Chair of the Scientific Advisory Panel for Pharmacy Research UK which is the principal charity supporting pharmacist and pharmacy through research activities. Carmel has also been the Chair for the Health Services Research and Pharmacy Practice Conference which was held in Belfast in April 2015.
Teaching
Carmel teaches on the undergraduate Pharmacy course (MPharm degree) focusing on aspects of pharmacy practice, policy and evidence-based health care. She has supervised 32 PhD students to completion and is currently supervising six PhD students and five post-doctoral fellows.
Memberships / Awards / Grants
Carmel was the first pharmacist to have been appointed to a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy (1998-99). She spent her fellowship year at the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at Brown University where she researched the impact of policy on prescribing in US nursing homes. Carmel is the only pharmacist to have been awarded a National Primary Care Career Scientist Award (from the NHS Executive) and has also been a Cochrane Fellow. She received the British Pharmaceutical Conference 2001 Practice Research medal for her research on quality of care issues in nursing homes for older people and was Practice Chair for this Conference in 2008. She has been awarded grants from Department of Health (London), Research and Development Office (Northern Ireland), NHS Executive, European Union, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety and various charities.