Accessibility statement

Nursing and Midwifery Research

We undertake a wide variety of empirical research, which contributes toward improving and informing the quality and effectiveness of care delivered by nurses and midwives in the NHS and other healthcare organisations. These include studies of patient and service user experience, evaluation of healthcare interventions, developing areas of practice, such as advanced practice, and research with childbearing women and their babies, families and carers. Some of our research has a methodological focus, including the area of qualitative evidence synthesis.

The current key themes within our nursing and midwifery related research portfolio includes the following:

  1. Men's health
  2. Palliative care
  3. Advanced practice
  4. Educational development and pedagogy
  5. Midwifery and maternity services.

However, our work also explores broader themes encompassing those issues at the interface between nursing/midwifery and the thematic areas of other Departmental research groups, including, for example, the areas of cancer care, mental health, public health, cardiac rehabilitation and trial evaluation.

Our team of nursing and midwifery lecturers also engage in a range of scholarly activities to ensure that our teaching is informed and shaped by current research evidence. Key nursing and midwifery research related staff within the Department include: 

Dr Rob Allison, Senior Lecturer: Rob's research interests are working with individuals and families regarding experiences and approaches to understanding and treating distress related to voice hearing (and psychosis); coercion across mental health treatment; exploring ways to support greater empowerment for people prescribed psychiatric medication; exploring more meaningful and effective ways for mental health nurses to engage with and work alongside people distressed with mental health distress entering services; and power imbalances within mental health service.

Dr Helen Anderson, Research Fellow: Helen’s research focuses on advanced practice, primary care and professional identity, as well as nursing and wider healthcare workforce issues. She has also carried out research exploring  the experiences of the very old in society (people aged over 95 years) and care home worker’s use of technology. Helen is a qualitative researcher with a specific interest in ethnographic methods. She works in the York Trials Unit using qualitative perspectives in clinical trials. Research Group: York Trials Unit.

Dr Helen Bedford, Lecturer in Midwifery: Helen’s research focuses on qualitative studies within midwifery education, midwifery and maternity care. 

Dr Sue Faulds, Senior Lecturer and Director of postgraduate programmes: Sue's research focuses on educational development and pedagogy with a particular focus on advanced practice.

Dr Kate Flemming, Senior Lecturer: Kate leads on the integration of research into teaching in the Department on our new undergraduate nursing curriculum. Her research programme focuses on complex interventions including patient and carer experience of palliative care across different service models, disease types and morbidities, including motor neurone disease and heart failure. This work is closely integrated with her methodological expertise in qualitative evidence synthesis. Kate has strong leadership, practice and research links with St Leonard’s Hospice in York. Research Group: Public Health & Society.

Professor Paul Galdas, Professor in Nursing: Paul’s research programme primarily focuses on self-management support for men living with long-term conditions, including men’s help-seeking and engagement with health services in relation to coronary heart disease, mental health and chronic illness. Research Group: Cardiac Care and Education.

Dr Beth Hardy, Senior Lecturer in Nursing: Beth‘s research focuses on palliative and end of life care; her particular interests are nurse education, families and carers, and the lived experience of health and illness towards the end of life.

Dr Mike Parker, Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor in Nursing (Adult) with a specialist clinical interest in the deteriorating patient and resuscitation. Mike’s doctoral thesis and research interests lay mainly in education and are situated in the qualitative paradigm; specifically case study. Mike’s doctoral research investigated attrition in undergraduate nursing and the associated barriers and facilitators to completion. 

Dr Elaine Whitton, Lecturer in Nursing and MSc Nursing programme lead: Research interests include health inequalities, nurse education, partnership working, nursing roles and learning disabilities.

Dr Jerome Wright, Senior Lecturer: Jerome’s empirical research has explored people’s meanings, experiences and responses to psychological distress in Malawi, Bangladesh and Pakistan with a particular interest in indigenous and traditional understandings, local expressions and help-seeking. Jerome’s work unpacks notions of ‘global’ mental health through critical and postcolonial perspectives that inform approaches to strengthening local health care responses. Research Group: Mental Health and Addiction.

For more information on the Nursing and Midwifery Research undertaken at the Department of Health Sciences and enquiries from potential doctoral students, please contact David Barrett david.i.barrett@york.ac.uk and for general information on PhDs visit www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/mphilphd/.