News
The School of Pharmacy Hosts the Health Services Research and Pharmacy Practice (HSRPP) Conference 2024
The School of Pharmacy was delighted to host the 30th Health Services Research and Pharmacy Practice (HSRPP) Conference on 25-26 April 2024 in Cork, the theme of which was 'Sustainable Development in Healthcare'. The conference attracted over 110 national and international delegates from over 15 countries across a range of disciplines, bringing together leading experts in the areas of health services and pharmacy research, as well as pharmacy practice and education.
Prof Stephen Byrne, Deputy President and Registrar of UCC, opened proceedings, acknowledging the rich and impactful history of the HSRPP conference, while also emphasising UCC’s commitment to sustainability. The conference co-chairs, Dr Suzanne McCarthy and Dr Kieran Dalton, outlined the main goal of the conference – to provide a forum to share ideas, innovations, and best practices aimed at enhancing developing sustainability in healthcare. Through keynote speakers, workshops, oral presentations, and poster presentations, we had a packed programme exploring innovative strategies to ensure sustainable healthcare delivery with the patient at the centre of our efforts.
The conference’s exciting line-up of keynote speakers included:
- Barry Melia, Principal Pharmacist at Public Health Scotland: ‘Environmental Sustainability – A public health perspective’.
- Carmel Hughes, Professor of Primary Care Pharmacy at the School of Pharmacy, Queen’s University Belfast: ‘Move fast and break things: Efficiency and sustainability in development and implementation of interventions focusing on medicines use in older people’.
- Debi Bhattacharya, Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University of Leicester: ‘Embracing the diversity of research methodology to develop interventions’.
Several engaging and informative workshops were delivered during the conference on topics such as: sustainability, exploratory research, human factors, public and patient engagement, and health literacy.
Further details on these sessions as well as the oral and poster presentations can be found in our conference programme or at the conference website. All abstracts were published in the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice and can be found here.
Well done to all attendees who presented at the conference. There was a high calibre of research shared, and our congratulations go to the prize winners listed below:
Oral Presentations
1st Prize: Ita Fitzgerald
2nd Prize: Frank Moriarty & Maria Donovan (Joint)
3rd Prize: Darren Walsh
Poster Presentations
1st Prize: Sarah Wilson & Aisling McGowan (Joint)
3rd Prize: Rosemary Lim
The conference dinner was held in The Kingsley Hotel on 25 April, where the outstanding service and high quality of food was matched by the accompanying entertainment – which comprised Irish music, singing, and dancing led by School of Pharmacy alumnus Maria Carey.
Proceedings of the conference were shared widely via social media, with #HSRPP2024 as the 5th highest trending hashtag on X in Ireland at one point.
Speaking after the event, Dr Suzanne McCarthy and Dr Kieran Dalton said “We would like to sincerely thank the HSRPP Conference steering committee, Pharmacy Research UK, our esteemed speakers, workshop leaders, sponsors (including Fáilte Ireland and UCC), the dedicated team at the School of Pharmacy, including our postgraduate students who were wonderful conference ambassadors, and all attendees who contributed to making HSRPP 2024 a great success”.
