Mr Tomazo Kallis

Tom Kallis is a senior clinical pharmacist, with experience of working across several sectors of primary care in Devon and Cornwall. He was one of the first pharmacists nationally to be awarded a ‘PhD for Primary Care Clinicians’ fellowship in 2023, a Wellcome-funded doctoral grant through the NIHR School for Primary Care Research. Tom is a qualitative researcher with expertise in the use of anthropological methods to understand primary care and pharmacist-delivered health encounters. He has experience of using conversation analysis, evidence synthesis, semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis, and questionnaire survey design and implementation.

Alongside his academic role, he maintains his clinical practice in an honorary capacity at Saltash Health Centre. He has clinical interests in the management of depression, anxiety, chronic pain and insomnia in primary care, as well as delivering structured medication reviews for patients with complex polypharmacy. He also supports patients with the deprescribing of medicines with dependence forming characteristics (benzos, opioids and z-drugs) in the general practice setting. Tom has extensive experience with media and public engagement, frequently promoting the role of pharmacists and community pharmacy in print news articles, radio and TV.

Research Interests:

Tom is interested in how the role of pharmacists in primary care settings can be improved and optimised. He uses qualitative and anthropological methods to understand how pharmacists and patients communicate with each other in health encounters. 

His PhD explored how general practice-based pharmacists handle clinical uncertainty in the context of complex polypharmacy. The findings from this work resulted in new models of medication review consultation structures, factors which can affect how clinical uncertainty is managed and how the deprescribing process can be affected by clinical uncertainty. 

Tom is also interested in communication in primary care encounters, clinical education, clinical decision making, organisational cultures in healthcare, medicines optimisation and the evolving role of pharmacists in primary care.