I am a qualitative health researcher with extensive research experience within complex health systems.  My research focuses upon two key interrelated aspects of health care; medication safety and medication optimisation at different points in patient care and the safe transfer of care between different health care settings and providers. My work is particularly aligned to systems thinking approaches which would understand healthcare as built on complex, reciprocal and interrelated systems.

I have worked in medication safety for over a decade. Much of my work in medication safety has involved how the use of prescribing safety indicators, utilised in a variety of healthcare settings including general practice, hospitals and prisons, can bring reductions in potentially hazardous prescribing. I am interested in patient lived experience of illness and particularly of medicine taking. This includes how patients understand their medicines and medicine taking and the role of themselves and others in medicine adherence.

My research in the transfer of care has included community pharmacy support following discharge from secondary care and patient transfer from intensive care. This work has explored the practices and processes involved in transfer of care from health professional patient and carer perspectives. I am interested in both transitions of care and follow-up of patients with complex health conditions in the community post discharge. This includes my current work which is exploring systems within post discharge care for patients who have had an hospital admission involving Acute Kidney Injury.

My research has focused upon interventions involving information technology in healthcare settings. I am interested in the role of technology in the prescribing of medicines and how medication safety might be enhanced through technology by pharmacists, clinicians and non-medical prescribers. I draw upon sociotechnical understandings that explore the ways technology is used within, and as part of, cultural, social and organisational contexts. I work from a broad understanding that people and technology are reciprocally and recursively related and the relationships between human agency, the social and technology are considered as interdependent.

My research utilises qualitative methodology that draws upon ontological and epistemological understandings that would be broadly defined as falling within both critical realist and relativist positions. In doing this I have utilised theory and methodology drawn from disciplines across the social sciences including discourse analysis, realist evaluation, strong structuration theory, normalisation process theory, systems thinking,  as well as broad sociotechnical theories. I am interested in the application of such theory and theoretical frameworks in understanding and evaluating interventions implemented within complex healthcare settings.

I joined Manchester University in 2011 as a Research Assistant in Primary Care. Since 2014 I have been a Research Associate in the Division of Pharmacy and Optometry. In August 2022 I became a Research Fellow in the Centre for Primary Care and Health Services Research

BA (Hons) in English and Politics, Postgraduate Certificate in Education, Graduate Diploma in Psychology, MSc (Distinction) Health Psychology, PhD Pharmacy Practice