Lisa Nwankwo - An Infection Pharmacist’s Perspective

I am a specialist antimicrobial Pharmacist at the Royal Brompton hospital, which means a lot of my work surrounds the use of medication for managing all types of infectious diseases. Working in a tertiary hospital, I see patients suffering from aspergillosis every day. It is a very busy but rewarding job because I get to meet great patients who are in actual fact great people!

Because I get to see them frequently it is easy to forget that fungal infections can cause serious adverse outcome that can negatively impact their daily lives. My work provides me real opportunities to understand the impact of this disease on their lives. This is the area of research I am particularly interested in, as recently my career has evolved from being completely clinical to clinical with academic research elements. In this latter phase of my career journey, I get to talk to patients in focus group sessions to understand what really matters to people living with aspergillosis. In all my research activities I include patients who have lived with aspergillosis. They educate me, and spur me on to make new AND MEANINFUL discoveries that will actually make a difference in how we treat patients that have aspergillosis. I am very much interested in learning from machines and the data we have accumulated over the years on the effect of the various therapies on our patients, and in finding signals that mean we can identify risk factors earlier, because in my mind, earlier detection/earlier identification means an earlier intervention or solution. I am hoping to commence my PHD research in this area as soon as I can secure the funding to do this research.

I have worked with a fantastic team of experts in this time, who have been great mentors to my learning and development in all things Aspergillosis: Dr Armstrong James (Infectious Diseases consultant and mycologist) and Dr Anand Shah (Consultant respiratory physician).