Ciara Duffy

English Pharmacy Board & Assembly

Current occupation:

• Qualified Person Novartis 
  

Year of registration: 

2012

Academic qualifications:

• Pharmaceutical Technology and Quality Assurance PG.DIP University of Manchester (2017)
• Advanced Clinical Pharmacy Practice PG.DIP Queens University Belfast (2017)
• Masters of Pharmacy (MPharm) University of Sunderland (2011)

Professional awards: Eligibility to act as a Qualified Person under the permanent provisions of Directive 2001/83/EC and 2001/82/EC (2020)

Professional experience and particular interests:

Ciara graduated in 2011 and after completing pre-registration training in Craigavon Area Hospital in her native Northern Ireland, she returned to England employed as a clinical pharmacist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead whilst also working as a locum community pharmacist.

In 2014 she moved to the Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust. Working at the Northern Advanced Centre for Cancer Care she established a particular interest in the manufacturing considerations for oncology and haematology treatments and joined NHS Technical Services via Newcastle Specials Pharmacy Production and QC Lab later the same year.

She commenced a postgraduate diploma in Pharmaceutical Technology and Quality Assurance whist finishing the Advanced Clinical Pharmacy Practice post graduate diploma. Following progression into a Senior Production Pharmacist role, she was seconded into a Clinical Trial post.

Under the mentorship of Anne Black and David Caulfield, Ciara took her fourth position in Newcastle Specials as a Senior Pharmacist - Quality Assurance in 2017. Here she developed her quality expertise, including training as an EL auditor to inspect NHS aseptic facilities and providing quality assurance advice for medicines to the wider Trust. She delivers QA training to others in this area, both internally and externally - lecturing on the local Pharmacy Technician specialism course and the MPharm programme in Newcastle University. 

She also completed ILM Leadership training and has active involvement in the staff engagement and wellbeing programs, Ciara embarked upon rigorous training and passed viva to become an eligible Qualified Person in December 2020.  Ciara’s passion is for quality and implementation of quality assurance to optimise patient outcomes. Not only through the development, manufacture, and administration of medicines, but also around the wider application of quality assurance in designing safe systems in healthcare.

She has special interests in innovative medicines, leadership, education, human factors, critical and strategic thinking.

Ciara is also one of the regular interviewers for the RPS PharmaScene podcast.