Dr Shakti Shrestha

Research Fellow

School of Pharmacy
Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences
shakti.shrestha@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 61940

Overview

Dr Shakti Shrestha is a Research Fellow/Senior Research Officer with an academic role at the School of Pharmacy, The University of Queensland (UQ). His research role mainly involves conducting and supporting an Australian Government funded (Dementia Ageing and Aged Care Mission Medical Research Future Fund) research on improving the Quality Use of Medicine in Australian Residential Aged Care via the role of knowledge broker pharmacist (the EMBRACE project). His academic role involves course coordination and teaching of UQ School of Pharmacy's two courses for Bachelor of Pharmacy degree on Quality Use of Medicines - PHRM2011 and PHRM2012.

Shakti obtained his PhD at UQ School of Pharmacy, which focused on optimising medication use in older adults with limited life expectancy, drawing his extensive experience working and researching in a clinical medicine and aged care environment. He was a recipient of the 2018 Australian Research Training Scholarship at UQ for his doctoral degree. He also received the 2022 Career Development Scholarship from UQ that allowed him to develop clinical trial skills at Queensland Health, Sunshine Coast University Hospital, Townsville University Hospital and Gold Coast Private Hospital.

Shakti received his Master's degree in Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Aberdeen (UK) in 2010 and had an opportunity to work with the International Stroke Registry data called SITS-ISTR (Safe Implementation of Thrombolysis in Stroke-International Stroke Thrombolysis Registry) in the National Health Service (NHS) Grampian Hospital, UK. He received his undergraduate Pharmacy degree from Pokhara University (Nepal) in 2007 and is registered as a Pharmacist both in Nepal and Australia.

Shakti has supervised nine pharmacy undergraduate thesis (4-years BPharm program) to completion in Nepal, and supervised several undergraduate and masters research project students. He continues to supervise a number of independent research projects mainly with the intention to support the capacity building of health professionals in research; these research often make into publications.

Shakti has research expertise in the field of geriatric and palliative medication use and safety, quality use of medicine, pharmacy practice and health services. He has research methodology expertise on systematic review, clinical research design, predictive model development, meta-analysis, medical statistics and qualitative research. He has more than 10 years of experience working in research, academic and clinical roles nationally and internationally.

Research Interests

  • Deprescribing
    Deprescribing in older adults and more specifically in those with limited life expectancy.

Research Impacts

One of Shakti's works on a conceptual model for deprescribing decision aid tool for use in older adults with limited life expectancy published in BMJ Open (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043766) has been utilised by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia in its Essential Continuing Pharmacy Education program module on deprescribing. Shakti also developed and validated a tool to assess the attitude of health care professional towards deprescribing in older adults with limited life expectancy called the HATD (Health care professionals' Attitudes Towards Deprescribing) tool (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2022.03.002); researchers from several countries have been given permission upon request to translate and utilise the HATD tool. One of Shakti's systematic reviews on outcomes of deprescribing in older adults with limited life expectancy (https://doi.org/10.1111/bcp.14113) was selected by the Drug and Therapeutic Bulletin (DTB) of British Medical Journals (http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/dtb.2020.000041) to make a consolidate the findings of this review for health professionals. DTB independently summarises the best evidence to enable doctors, pharmacists and other health care professionals to make informed and unbiased choices to help patients get the best care and has been providing healthcare professionals with practical and impartial advice on treatment for the last 60 years.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice, The University of Queensland
  • Masters (Coursework) of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Aberdeen
  • Bachelor (Honours) of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pokhara University

Publications

  • Bell, J. Simon, La Caze, Adam, Steeper, Michelle, Haines, Terry P., Hilmer, Sarah N., Troeung, Lakkhina, Quirke, Lyntara, Wesson, Jacqueline, Pond, Constance Dimity, Buys, Laurie, Ghahreman-Falconer, Nazanin, Lawless, Michael T., Shrestha, Shakti, Martini, Angelita, Ochieng, Nancy, Glamorgan, Francesca, Lagasca, Carmela, Walton, Rebecca, Cenin, Dayna, Kitson, Alison, Jung, Monica, Bennett, Alexandra and Cross, Amanda J. (2024). Evidence-based Medication knowledge Brokers in Residential Aged CarE (EMBRACE): protocol for a helix-counterbalanced randomised controlled trial. Implementation science : IS, 19 (1) 24, 1-15. doi: 10.1186/s13012-024-01353-z

  • Shrestha, Shakti, La Caze, Adam, Cross, Amanda, Steeper, Michelle and Bell, Simon (2024). Examining factors influencing implementation of a new psychotropic guideline in Australian aged care setting. 56th Australian Association of Gerontology Conference, Gold Coast, QLD Australia, 14-17 November 2023. Australian Association of Gerontology.

  • Paudel, Raju, Tunkl, Christine, Shrestha, Shakti, Subedi, Ram Chandra, Adhikari, Ayush, Thapa, Lekhjung, Gajurel, Bikram Prasad, Chandra, Avinash, Kharel, Ghanashyam, Jalan, Pankaj, Phuyal, Subash, Pokharel, Babu Ram, Acharya, Subi, Bogati, Kanchan, Jha, Pinky, Kharbuja, Naresh and Gumbinger, Christoph (2023). Stroke epidemiology and outcomes of stroke patients in Nepal: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Neurology, 23 (1) 337, 337. doi: 10.1186/s12883-023-03382-5

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