Ann's current roles include
Professor of Nursing Education

Ann qualified as a general nurse in 1982 and as mental health nurse in 1984; She has worked as a nurse educator since 1987 first as a clinical teacher and then as a lecturer at the University College Chester. She moved to Manchester as a Lecturer in 1998 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2005 and Professor in 2012. Ann was subsequently recognised as a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 2017.

Ann completed an MSc in Practitioner Research in 1992 when she examined nurses' knowledge, skills and attitudes to pain and pain management using a mixed methods approach. She completed her PhD part-time at Manchester in the Department of Sociology examining the Organisation of Surgical Nursing Work from an Ethnomethodological stance. This study highlighted the role and function of taken for granted work practices engaged in by nurses within general surgical wards. From this analysis, Ann highlighted how nurses manage their work whilst simultaneously dealing with day-to-day organisational troubles.

Ann has also undertaken a series of interprofessional learning projects bringing together nursing, midwifery, medical, medical science, geography and education students to work on interprofessional learning units of study. She has also been engaged in examining the impact of a blended face-to-face and e-learning approach to the teaching of Root Cause Analysis Techniques to qualified practitioners. In addition, she was invited to become a research advisory group member for a study looking at Student Nurses Perceptions of HCA’s funded by the Burdett Nursing Trust. Ann is also worked as a consultant on projects funded as part of the Service Delivery, Organisation Research and Development Programme under the auspices of the Department of Health looking at the impact of Assistant Practitioners in acute NHS trusts and later exploring the development of the assistant workforce with community based settings.

Ann's latest work is focused on developing a MOOC related to Research in the Real World: Health and Social Care, alongside a team of colleagues drawn from across the Division and which is designed to target school leavers choosing a profession as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students alike to enable them to appreciate what it is like to be a researcher and the challenges they face in getting research off the ground.

In addition, Ann is also been part of a national team of educational facilitators who have helped to train NHS Research Ethics Committee Members how to review social science research studies and she regularly facilitates introduction to research ethics processes for new and established researchers, as well as research governance and pharma representatives to enable them to navigate the research ethics process more effectively on behalf of the HRA.

Ethnomethodology and Qualitative Research Methods

As part of her Doctoral work grounded in ethnomethodological principles Ann uncovered the ordinariness of everyday surgical nursing activities to make them visible to those practitioners working in the field (Wakefield 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002). This work also explored the processes nurses on general wards used to manage the dying patient. As ethnomethodology is a relatively novel research method within nursing, Ann specifically wrote a paper outlining the difficulties, benefits, and rigours of using such methods within nursing research (Wakefield 2000).

Education Practice Related experience

Ann is currently supervising a PhD thesis exploring how educational institutes in Scotland manage student will defined learning difficulties both in the academic and practice environment, and has previously examined the role of the preceptor in the development of newly qualified staff nurses.

Interprofessional/Multiprofessional Education

This is an area of research that Ann first started to explore in 1999, since then she has undertaken a series of educational research projects examining the effect of bringing nursing, medical and other healthcare students together to learn within an interactive collaborative framework (Cooke et al 2003, 2003, Tucker et al 2003, Wakefield et al 2003, 2003, Furber et al 2004, Wakefield et al 2006).

Patient Safety

Ann has been a supervisor students who have specifically examined issues related to related to patient safety within the clinic setting in Spain and in a hospital setting in Saudi Arabia. This second PhD thesis specifically examined Factors Contributing to Errors in Nursing Practice in Saudi Arabia ate exploring the patient safety and its effect on patient outcomes.

Moreover Ann has previously been part of a team of researchers exploring the impact of using a blended e-learning approach to the teaching of patient safety and Root Cause Analysis a project entitled A Blended Approach to Patient Safety Education, Training & Development: Requirements for an Evaluation Study an area of research she would like to develop further.

Research interests

Patient Safety

Interprofessional Education

Research Related to Nursing Education

Students Perceptions of HCA’s

Sociology of Nursing Work and Social Organisations

Death and Dying

Breaking Bad News

Ann has extensive experience of curriculum development, design, organisation, and management. Following her appointment at the University of Manchester in 1998, she instigated a series of significant changes within the BNurs(Hons) and MSc Nursing and Midwifery Studies programmes. Ann has also helped develop a series of interprofessional education initiatives at Manchester in collaboration with a group of medical and allied healthcare professionals.  As a result she has helped generate a succession of innovative research studies examining the feasibility and effectiveness of using integrated interprofessional teaching strategies to deliver interprofessional undergraduate education (Wakefield et al 2003, 2003, Tucker et al 2003, Cooke et al 2003, 2003, Furber et al 2004, Wakefield et al 2006), and has supported students to undertake research related to interprofessonal learning and working (Pumar Mendez et al 2008).

Teaching Description

Ann commenced here career in nursing education in 1987 since then she has amassed considerable experience in using a range of teaching and learning methods including didactic teaching methods, group work, experiential and simulated learning, OSCE's, WebCT based e-learning, PBL, one-to-one supervision, clinical supervision and action learning sets. As outline above Ann has been instrumental in helping to set up a series of teaching and learning innovations since 1999. These have included the following undergraduate and postgraduate funded educational projects:

Thinking Beyond the Boundaries: An Interprofessional Case Management Conference (postgraduate)

Interdisciplinary Learning for Postgraduates from Across the New University of Manchester

Learning Through the Analysis of a Professional Task

Breaking Bad News

Collaborative Interprofessional Learning Through the Development of a Multiprofessional Teaching Ward

Ann is currently leading a team of educators to develop a MOOC exploring research in the real work related to practitioner research.

Ann has previously been Programme Director for the BNurs (Hons) and MSc Nursing and Midwifery Studies programmes, Quality Assurance and Enhancement Officer for Postgraduate Education and Academic Lead for all of the Division's Quality Assurance and Enhancement Processes (2009-2014).  Director of Transnational Education 2014-2017) During that time she oversaw the Annual and Five year review processes, and four curriculum revalidation processes, one of which included the accreditation of a BSc Nursing Studies Programme (2011-2017)hosted in Singapore and accredited by the Singapore Nursing Board, the only English post registration programme to have achieved full accreditation by the SNB to date.

Membership of Committees and Professional Bodies:
Education Research
Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy University of Manchester/HEA                                      Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. University of York. 
RCN Education Forum Special Interest Group.  Royal College of Nursing

Nursing Research
Research Special Interest Group.  Royal College of Nursing
Pain Research Special Interest Group.  Royal College of Nursing

Sociological Research
British Sociological Association.  University of Durham
Medical Sociology Group.  University of Durham 

Research Topic Keywords:

• Ethnomethodology
• Case Study
• Impact Evaluation
• Qualitative Methods
  

Qualifications
Academic
1996  Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology by Research).  The University of Manchester 
1992  Master of Science (Practitioner Research).  Manchester Metropolitan University 
1989  Certificate of Education (Distinction teaching).  Wolverhampton University 
1986  Further Education Teaching Certificate City and Guilds 730 (Credit teaching).  City and Guilds, London 
1984  Diploma in Nursing Part A. University of London

Qualifications
Professional

2017  Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

2003  Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Higher Education Academy 
1989  Recorded Nurse Teacher.  Wolverhampton University
1987  E.N.B. 978 Promotion of Continence.  South Cheshire School of Nursing
1986  Recorded Clinical Nurse Teacher.  United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing Midwifery & Health Visiting
1985  Registered Mental Nurse.  South Cheshire School of Nursing
1982  Registered General Nurse.  South Cheshire School of Nursing