Jennifer Silverthorne is Reader in Clinical Pharmacy in the Division of Pharmacy and Optometry, School of Health Sciences at the University of Manchester, where she has more than 20 years’ experience of leading contemporary pharmacy education. She has an NHS hospital pharmacy background where she specialised in elderly care, providing care to vulnerable adults.
As a result, Jennifer is driven to prepare healthcare professionals for seeing the person behind the prescription. She began her academic career as a teacher practitioner in 2001 before taking up a substantive role in 2007. Jennifer strives to make clinical pharmacy education accessible to all learners. Jennifer manages structured experiential learning for pharmacy undergraduates, enabled by partnership working with the NHS and Health Education England. She leads a team of 11 honorary clinical tutors who deliver constructively aligned placements to more than 600 pharmacy undergraduates annually and whose practice is at the forefront of national curricular development.
Jennifer led on the implementation of a flipped classroom, scaffolded enquiry-based undergraduate pharmacy curriculum, and programmatic assessment strategy. She also transitioned a small, blended learning postgraduate course to a fully online programme to meet the time-scarce needs of the pharmacy workforce. In so doing, she made clinical training available to community pharmacists via the Pharmacy Integration Fund, upskilling the profession to provide new and innovative services.
Jennifer developed and leads a team of 10 honorary lecturers, supporting their professional development while increasing the relevance and authenticity of clinical pharmacy education. Jennifer teaches clinical therapeutics using a range of technology-driven innovations, flipped classroom techniques, and action learning sets to enhance the student experience. Jennifer influences national pharmacy education policy, via advisory work with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Health Education England.
Through conducting scholarly work and chairing the annual national Pharmacy Education Conference, she also contributes to the evidence base that shapes pharmacy education. Jennifer is particularly interested in novel interventions and technologies to support isolated and disadvantaged learners to engage and to access authentic provision. Jennifer’s work has been recognised by the University of Manchester with a Teaching Excellence award, and she is an Advance HE Senior Fellow.