Dr Polly Mitchell

Polly is a post-doctoral research fellow on the Wellcome Trust-funded project “But why is that better?”, which investigates how applied philosophy and ethics can inform and support healthcare quality improvement.

Before joining King’s, she completed her PhD in Philosophy at UCL, focussing on the philosophy of well-being. Prior to this Polly worked for several years in healthcare quality improvement, managing a national clinical audit project and researching patient reported outcomes.

Research

“But why is that better” explores the complex and contested concepts of healthcare quality and healthcare quality improvement. We seek to work within quality improvement, using the tools of applied philosophy, to address some of the ethical and conceptual challenges faced by researchers and quality improvement practitioners.

Outside of the project, Polly's research broadly concerns the philosophy of health and well-being. In particular, she thinks and writes about the definition and measurement of health and well-being, and the role that measures of health and well-being play in healthcare decision-making and public policy.

Polly has trained as a philosopher, but she likes to tread the boundaries between philosophy and other disciplines. Her interdisciplinary research interests include health policy, economics (particularly utility theory), and psychometrics.

Find out more about Polly's research on her PURE profile.