Nursing Research / Midwifery Research / Health Studies Research
|MPhil/PhD
|Part Time, Full Time
The Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery is regarded as a centre of excellence for nursing and midwifery, achieving high scores in research and teaching quality assessments. The first MPhil/PhD students enroled in the late 1970s and since then the School has expanded steadily its range of high quality graduate education programmes to meet the needs of increasingly well-educated healthcare professionals who wish to continue their education to support and develop their careers.
The purpose of our research is to improve the quality of care, services and outcomes for patients and their carers. There are 3 overarching programmes of work:
- Patient and carer experience: a programme of work that explores the patient and carer experience with the aim of improving their care, providing timely information and understanding their support needs depending on the illness including from cancer, mental health and diabetes
- Healthcare workforce, organisation and service delivery: the National Nursing Research Unit (NNRU) and colleagues carry out work that examines how the organisation of the nursing and healthcare work force impacts upon service delivery and organisation within the NHS but also in global healthcare systems
- Health and well-being: maternal and family health and wellbeing is the main focus of activity within this programme. This ranges from ensuring the safety of women and their babies during and following childbirth to supporting families' wellbeing through health visiting.
The work we do is underpinned by cross cutting principles: engagement with patient and user perspectives, commitment to conceptual and methodological innovation, attention to the policy relevance and practical application of our findings through interventions.
Our researchers come from a wide range of professional backgrounds including Nursing, Midwifery, Allied Health Professions, psychology, anthropology and social science
Research income: In excess of £1.5million for 2009/10
Current number of academic staff: 38 academic and research staff support research students
Current number of research students: 80 research students
Recent publications:
- 'The adoption, local implementation and assimilation into routine nursing practice of a national quality improvement programme: the Productive Ward in England' Journal of Clinical Nursing, 20 (7-8), pp. 1196-1207, 2011.
- 'Developing an intervention for cancer patients prescribed oral chemotherapy: a generic patient diary' EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CANCER CARE, 19, pp. 21-28, 2010
- 'Metrics for monitoring local inequalities in access to maternity care: developing a basket of markers from routinely available data' QUALITY AND SAFETY IN HEALTH CARE, 19, pp. 1-5 doi:10.1136/qshc.2008.032136
- Place of medical qualification and outcomes of UK General Medical Council "fitness to practise" process: cohort study' British Medical Journal, 342;2011:d1817
- Parents' and children's communication about genetic risk: qualitative study learning from families' experiences. European Journal Human Genetics (2011) 19, 640-646
Current research projects:
- Testing accelerated experience-based co-design: using a national archive of patient experience narrative interviews to promote rapid patient-centred service improvement
- A synthesis of research about health visiting practice: a scoping review of the existing published literature on health visiting practice, and its impact on child and family wellbeing
- A study of the barriers to early presentation and diagnosis with breast cancer in Black African, Black Caribbean and White women.
- Nurse Forecasting – Human Resources planning in Nursing
- Demand-side financing in maternity care in low- and middle- income countries
Partner organisations: The School of Nursing & Midwifery is highly regarded by leading London NHS Trusts with whom we have a strong record of success in collaborative working- http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nursing/partners/index.aspx. The School also has strong relationships with a large numebr of renowned educational and healthcare organisations around the world - http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nursing/partners/international/index.aspx
