We Are Norstella

Nana Ofori-Atta

Managing Editor in Clinical and Custom Content at Chemist & Druggist (C&D)

Nana Ofori-Atta is the managing editor in clinical and custom content at Chemist & Druggist (C&D). As a registered pharmacist, he brings directly relevant expertise to the role, which he has held for nearly three years.

Tell us a little bit more about your role.

My main role is to understand what the client’s goals are when it comes to content and aligning that with our audience’s needs. Being a pharmacist really helps because our main audience is pharmacists. It is important to know what kind of things they are looking for from the product or from our clients and shaping that into a piece of content that the audience are happy to engage with.

How did you join the company? What in your background brought you to pharma?

I worked as a graduate pharmacist for about 12 years. Within that, I took up a role as a teacher practitioner at the University of Kent for two days a week while also managing a community pharmacy. I found I really loved teaching and making educational content interesting and engaging for students.

When COVID happened, I fell out of love with the community part of pharmacy because it became really hard. Everything was a lot more pressured, in addition to having to worry about family, friends and everything else going on. At that time, a lot of friends had left community pharmacy and joined corporate companies. I’d always insisted I wanted to stay but when COVID happened I thought I was not actually making any difference working in the front line of pharmacy.

I wanted to take a role where I can actually make a difference and influence the way pharmacy is thought about and shaped. A role came up at the National Pharmacy Association as a learning development pharmacist, and then three months into the role I was approached by C&D, which I’d always been aware of because it’s a magazine that almost every pharmacist has to read. The role that was presented to me was unique and it also offered me an opportunity to do exactly what I wanted to do, which was to create interesting and innovative learning content to help shape how pharmacists learn.

 What does your day-to-day usually look like?

There are a lot of meetings! I also have to update, commission and design new continuous professional development (CPD) for pharmacists on an ongoing basis. I never really have a single day which is exactly the same, because I’m always doing something different, which may be doing a webinar, going to events or public speaking. I often end up having to liaise with sales and marketing, and products on a day-to-day basis. Either of them might ask me for ideas of what a pharmacist would think or clarification on an article or any clinical part of the role which needs input from a pharmacist.

 What are some of the larger projects you’re working on?

One big project I am focused on is around dermatology. I realized that when I was in practice that many skin conditions were only focused on Caucasian skin. I’m working to try and get some sponsorship around creating content where we can show conditions on other skin types. The C&D mentorship scheme, which is in its infancy, involves creating mentors from our Pills Award and using that to match them with students graduating from university to help them learn about what the job entails.

 What’s been your career highlight to date?

It may sound really silly, but at the C&D awards I got to meet the voiceover guy for University Challenge. I love that program, and he announced me as one of the contestants.

 What trends are you seeing across the industry right now that Norstella is in a unique position to help with?

The main issue with pharmacy for a while now has been funding. Government funding was cut, then they got put in with a five-year funding and this year they are to get a new funding budget. A lot of pharmacies are moving away from bricks-and-mortar and going online, which is more convenient with the funding issue. There are people in these pharmacies producing really innovative ways of running a pharmacy and providing that service to patients.

I think C&D is in a unique position to actually champion these people, bring it to the forefront and get pharmacy to move from its traditional position of just supplying drugs to a more beneficial position of offering services to patients in new and innovative ways. The good thing about pharmacies is that they are easy to access. Every neighborhood has at least one or two pharmacies and pharmacists are trained to provide these services like blood pressure or diabetes testing services that shouldn’t be clogging up the NHS.

Norstella is in quite a unique position at the moment, because we basically offer a service from drug discovery all the way to patients with the companies that we have. In the next few years, like every industry, pharmacy is going to be affected hugely by AI and by having the right software, so I think products like Evaluate, MMIT, and Citeline stand to make the biggest difference when it comes to using AI and using technology to influence our clients. 

Which company principle resonates most with you?

‘Humility, gratitude, and learning’. The learning part, because I have a huge interest in learning myself and in providing content to make learning fun and interesting. At university, I always used to think learning was just about remembering because that’s how we were taught but I found that I understood the concepts I was learning far better when I talked with the teacher in more depth. The teacher has a critical role, in my opinion, in making learning interesting and relevant enough for the student.

Humility and gratitude have been instilled in me by my parents. I’ve been very lucky that I was able to come over to the UK to study, to get into those schools I went to, and also to have parents that supported and pushed me to do the best that I could. I was in Ghana until I was 15 and then came over. My sixth form was very supportive, and I got into a good university. I’ve always had my parents there to help and also to keep me humble. 

What would you tell someone just starting their career with Norstella?

Be bold with your ideas. A big frustration for me in community pharmacy was finding it difficult to take my idea up a corporate ladder or getting approvals for anything. What I have found in Norstella and C&D is that everyone works on a ‘fail fast’ mentality. If you have an idea, you try it out. If it works, then you get support from everyone to go ahead and do it.

What do you like most about working at Norstella?

My colleagues are the best part. They make it fun and everyone that I’ve worked with is happy to help whenever they can and to give you support. I’ve never worried about asking someone for something. 

What do you like to do outside of work?

I enjoy going to the gym, and I used to play football quite a bit, but as we’re getting older, friends are disappearing and it’s hard to get a team together. I also like spending time with family and socializing. I try to go to Ghana at least three times a year.

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