Staff Profile

Tania Jones is a Lecturer in Pharmacy within Newcastle Pharmacy School.

Tania's career spans over 20 years in clinical and academic practice, with extensive experience in hospital and GP pharmacy roles.

Tania became an independent prescriber in 2009, specialising in pain management and anaesthetics. Her clinical expertise is primarily in pain, surgery and anaesthetics, but also has interest in chronic disease management and diseases of ageing.

Tania has worked for hospitals in Northumbria and Gateshead NHS Trusts and also in general practice, where she worked for Rosmellyn GP surgery in Cornwall, conducting medication reviews, prescribing acute and chronic medicines and conducting complex opioid deprescribing for high-risk patients.

Tania has also worked as an academic since 2010, as Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy at Sunderland University. In this post, Tania was appointed to the role of Programme Leader of the postgraduate MSc in Clinical Pharmacy and directed the same course at Hong Kong University SPACE. Tania has worked internationally in pharmacy education at SEGI University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, teaching into the Master of Pharmacy programme, in addition to delivering education in Hong Kong. Tania led a major programme re-design for MSc Clinical Pharmacy at Sunderland University, before moving to Newcastle University in 2021 to take on a Lecturer position in Pharmacy.

Tania has held recent national roles including Chair of the Deprescribing Special Interest Group for the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine.

Qualifications

• Master of Pharmacy - 2004 (MPharm)
• Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy - 2007 (PGDip)
• Practice Certificate in Pharmacist Prescribing - 2009 (IPresc)
• Master of Clinical Pharmacy - 2012 (MSc)
• Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education - 2012 (PGCertHE)
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy - 2018 (SFHEA)
• Master of Philosophy - 2023 (MPhil)

Currently studying PhD in Pharmacy

Tania's main research interests are related to chronic disease in later life. She is interested in the management of pain, diseases of ageing and their mechanisms, polypharmacy and deprescribing.

Tania's PhD focuses on pain management. The research examines the feasibility of a digital intervention to support deprescribing of high-dose opioids for chronic pain in primary care. Tania manages this nationally-funded NIHR project, co-ordinating over 100 GP practices in the region to test the intervention.

Tania has obtained a research degree of Master of Philosophy (MPhil) with a thesis entitled "Association between circulating microRNAs and musculoskeletal ageing conditions of osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and sarcopenia in humans" at Newcastle University.

Tania has secured research grants with colleagues from the Population Sciences Institute at Newcastle University from NIHR BRC, MRC-Versus Arthritis CIMA and developed industry collaborations with HTG Molecular (Phoenix, Arizona) for her microRNA work.

She has supervised undergraduate and postgraduate masters students in conducting research in clinical pharmacy. She is happy to speak to prospective collaborators on projects relating to pharmacy education, opioid management and deprescribing.

Tania holds a postgraduate teaching qualification (PGCertHE) and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She previously won a teaching award for her conference-style postgraduate teaching.

She supports undergraduate pharmacy students studying the Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) programme and is a personal tutor.

Tania is the pharmacy anatomy lead for cadaveric practical anatomy classes for pharmacy students. Tania also is the strategic lead for the prescribing elements of the MPharm programme and is heavily involved in clinical skills teaching.

She leads the ACCeS placements in the MPharm programme that operate through the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Freeman Hospitals in Newcastle.

• Articles

  • Li CKH, Baker K, Jones T, Coulson E, Roberts A, Birrell F. Safety and Tolerability of Subcutaneous Methotrexate in Routine Clinical Practice. Arthritis Care and Research 2021, 73(9), 1306-1311.
  • Jones T, Darzi A, Egger G, Ickovics J, Noffsinger E, Ramdas K, Stevens J, Sumego M, Birrell F. Process and Systems: A systems approach to embedding group consultations in the NHS. Future Healthcare Journal 2019, 6(1), 8-16.
  • Birrell F, Goff I, Coulson L, Jones T, Baqir W, O'Brien N, Rapley T, Gray K, Flood B, Russell-Westhead M. Harnessing new models of care for chronic disease: co-design and sustainable implementation of group clinics into UK clinical practice. Future Healthcare Journal 2019, 6(Suppl. 1), 77-78.
  • Birrell F, Brady L, Jones T. Group Consultations: Benefits and Implementation Strategies. Practice Nursing 2018, 29(10), 484-488.
  • Baqir W, Hughes J, Jones T, Barrett S, Desai N, Copeland R, Campbell D, Laverty A. Impact of medication review, within a shared-decision-making framework, on deprescribing in people living in care homes. European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy 2017, 24(1), 30-33.

• Book Chapter

  • Jones T, Baqir W, Birrell F. Personalizing patient care with medicines: Innovative models of care from the United Kingdom. In: Ud-Din Babar,Z, ed. Pharmacy Practice Research Case Studies. 2021.

• Review

  • Jones TL, Esa MS, Li KHC, Krishnan SRG, Elgallab GM, Pearce MS, Young DA, Birrell FN. Osteoporosis, fracture, osteoarthritis & sarcopenia: A systematic review of circulating microRNA association. Bone 2021, 152, 116068.