Reader in Diabetes & Primary Care
Kirsty is a clinical academic, diabetes specialist nurse and health psychologist based within the Department of Adult Nursing. Following a BSc in Psychology at the University of York she completed nurse training at King’s College London, gaining her registration in 1997. Since then she has worked clinically in general medicine and from 2001 onwards she specialised in diabetes. She has combined her psychology background with diabetes and has conducted research in this area with a focus on supporting people with diabetes to improve their self-management. She was awarded a PhD in 2007 from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, for her work on a biopsychosocial model to explain the adverse outcomes in people with diabetes and foot ulcers. Since then she has worked in research and clinical roles at King’s College London and King’s College Hospital. She moved to the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care in 2017 where she took up the post of Reader. She has worked part-time as a diabetes specialist nurse for the Lambeth Diabetes Intermediate Care Team since 2015.
Kirsty has broad research interests mainly related to supporting people with diabetes to improve their self-management. She has conducted studies for the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and Welcome Trust including the South London Diabetic Foot Study, a prospective study to determine the association between depression and adverse outcomes; the South London Diabetes Cohort study (SOUL-D), a prospective cohort for people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes; the Diabetes 6 study, an RCT of psychologically enhanced diabetes care delivered by practice nurses; and the MOVE-IT study, an RCT involving motivational interviewing therapy delivered by health trainers to reduce cardiovascular risk.
She has been in receipt of 2 NIHR fellowships, one to determine the barriers to attending structured education for people with type 2 diabetes and currently, she is developing a new psychologically-informed intervention for people with type 2 diabetes who are new to insulin treatment.
Kristy is committed to ensuring that people with diabetes have the opportunity to participate in research and she is the diabetes specialty lead for the Clinical Research Network in south London.
If you’re thinking of applying for one of our PhD programmes and are looking for potential supervisors, please email nmpc_pgr_enquiries@kcl.ac.uk listing the names of the supervisors you’ve identified as having expertise in your chosen area, along with your CV and a short research proposal. Our Postgraduate Research Team will contact supervisors on your behalf and get back to you.
If you have any queries in the meantime, please use the email address above, rather than contacting potential PhD supervisors directly, because they are unable to respond to initial enquiries.
The PREPARED study is an integrated primary care-based programme of pre-pregnancy care to improve pregnancy outcomes in women with type 2 diabetes.
Project status: Ongoing
Kirsty’s main teaching roles involve supervising BSc, MSc, and PhD students within the field of diabetes. She organises research elective placements for BSc students who want to gain research experience. She is helping to develop an innovative blended learning MSc/PGCert in Diabetes which will be available from January 2021.
The PREPARED study is an integrated primary care-based programme of pre-pregnancy care to improve pregnancy outcomes in women with type 2 diabetes.
Project status: Ongoing
Kirsty’s main teaching roles involve supervising BSc, MSc, and PhD students within the field of diabetes. She organises research elective placements for BSc students who want to gain research experience. She is helping to develop an innovative blended learning MSc/PGCert in Diabetes which will be available from January 2021.