Peter qualified as a pharmacist in 1974 and has held posts in hospitals, the community and in Health Authorities in most regions in England. In 1989 he took on general management responsibility for Primary Care Development in North Liverpool and became Regional Director of Primary Care in 1995. The creation of Regional Offices led to six years in the Civil Service covering jobs in Performance Management, Clinical Audit, Primary Care and Partnerships with Local Authorities. Peter was born and grew up in Wigan and in 2002 Peter became Chief Executive of Ashton, Leigh and Wigan PCT.

Sue has had a long career as pharmacist in the NHS, including hospital chief pharmacist, pharmaceutical adviser, and therapeutics trainer for the NPC. She has also had a secondment to the Prescribing Branch of the DH, when involved in the early analysis and roll out of nurse prescribing She is now head of Prescribing Support Unit, based in the NHS Information Centre in Leeds. Current responsibilities include;

• Publication of a series of reports on prescribing, publication of QOF data, and a report on community pharmacy services.
• Responding to data requests and parliamentary questions

Karen has a background in health research and, along with Professor Courtenay, has conducted a number of studies of nurse prescribing in the areas of pain, dermatology, and diabetes. She is currently undertaking a PhD on the topic of nurse prescribing for patients in pain.

Molly is a qualified nurse with a background in Intensive Care. During recent years she has worked within education and research and is Professor of Prescribing and Medicines Management at Reading University. Molly has undertaken a number of studies in this area including research for the Department of Health. She is currently undertaking research in the areas of nurse prescribing in diabetes, dermatology, paediatrics, and pain. Molly has produced a number of publications (including 6 books) and is frequently invited to speak at conferences both at a national and international level. She was the joint prescribing and medicines management adviser at the Royal College of Nursing for 5 years and now works with the Association for Nurse Prescribing (ANP) as their National Prescribing Adviser.

Working as a qualified pharmacist for over 12 years, with experience in hospital, community and working in primary care pharmacy for 10 years. The last 6 years I have worked as a pharmaceutical adviser and have a keen interest in developing the role of the primary care clinical pharmacist. I was one of the first supplementary prescribers to qualify back in 2004 and have been practising as an independent prescriber for the last two years. My current role involves being the non medical prescribing lead for Dudley PCT and leading a team of 16 practice based pharmacists all of whom are qualified and practising independent prescribers. I continue to work as an Independent prescriber within medication review clinics for two sessions a week. In my spare time I lecture on non medical prescribing courses at Worcester and Birmingham City Universities and am an associate honorary lecturer at Keele University.

Heather has been working in HIV since 1991, and established the UK’s first pharmacist-led antiretroviral clinic in 1996. One of her main areas of interest is patients’ health beliefs and beliefs about medicines and how these affect decisions to take up offers of treatment and adherence to therapy – and thus how best to involve patients in treatment decision-making. She has been a NMP since 2004 and leads a team of 4 specialist pharmacists who also hold clinics (1 of whom is also an NMP and another of whom is currently undertaking the IP course).

Sue's research interests are focused on evaluating the contribution of non-medical prescribing to health care practice and patient experiences and outcomes. She is particularly interested in evaluating how health professionals communicate with patients about medicines. Her research is also concerned with testing and evaluating other nurse-led interventions for the effective management of long term conditions. Sue led the first national evaluation of independent nurse prescribing in England. Together with colleagues at the University of Keele, she is leading the on-going national evaluation of nurse and pharmacist independent prescribing for the Policy Research Programme at the Department of Health.

Alesha is working on the national Evaluation of Nurse and Pharmacist Independent Prescribing (ENPIP) and has been based at Southampton University since summer 2008. She is currently analysing data from the national surveys of nurse and pharmacist independent prescribers as part of ENPIP as well as conducting a survey of NMP leads. Alesha was previously a lecturer in the School of Pharmacy, University of Queensland where she researched and studied for a PhD in Geographical differences, national and international, in the utilization of the benzodiazepine and antidepressant groups of medicines.

Previously a retail pharmacist before moving in to primary care as a GP rescribing advisor; Currently working in the Community Health Services arm of Surrey PCT providing medicines management support to all staff; Also work on a weekly sessional basis for a large GP practice conducting medication reviews amongst other things, and also continue to see patients through my work in retail pharmacy; Am involved in developing teaching and learning materials for higher education; Will be talking about involving patients in the decisions about their care following my work with NPC+.

Sam Sherrington, NMP National Advisor, NPC

In Jan 2009, Sam was commissioned by the NPC to undertake the NPC NMP National Advisor role. Sam also works on behalf of NHS Northwest Strategic Health Authority, based at Bolton PCT, leading the implementation of Department of Health Non Medical Prescribing Programme across the region. Sam is a Registered Nurse, qualified Specialist Practitioner in the home, District Nursing and Nurse Prescriber. Sam spent many happy years in Nursing Practice, the last 5 as a team manager. During this time, Sam held the position of PCT Cancer Lead, advising with two GPs, on the strategic direction for the Trust in implementing The Cancer Plan. Sam won a scholarship at The University of Manchester to undertake her MSc (Cancer). Sam was awarded The Eileen Steele Memorial Award for Caring from The University of Northumbria. In 2006, Sam formed part of the commissioning team which won a Gold Award for NMP e-learning at the International Visual Communications Awards. In her spare time, Sam spends time with her young family, is an elected board member of The Cooperative Group and is currently undertaking her MBA.