Cohort 11

Senior Research Associate 

First and foremost, I am a health services researcher. In my career to date, I have worked across primary care, palliative care, and public health, but for the last six years I have been firmly back in the primary care research community.

I am currently Senior Research Associate in the Primary Care Unit at the University of Cambridge. I most recently managed the ‘Improve’ NIHR programme grant, a five-year portfolio of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods studies investigating the utility and impact of patient experience surveys in primary care. As well as patient experience, and particularly interactions between doctors and patients, I maintain an interest in long-term conditions (I was recently involved in the national evaluation of care planning for long term conditions, in collaboration with Manchester University) and inequalities in care (my MRC Fellowship in Health Services Research focused on an assessment of the equity of use of specialist palliative care in relation to age).

I have a degree in Biological Anthropology from Cambridge University, an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health from UCL. I also have a particular interest in the development and application of mixed methods, and in knowledge exchange for academics.

Research Fellow

I have worked on a number of projects as a Health Services Researcher. Initially I was employed as a Research Assistant on a two-year project looking at patient-centred care. I then undertook an MRes followed by my PhD which I completed whilst working full-time as a Research Associate on the project from which my PhD data was derived. My thesis looked at the introduction of the Quality and Outcomes Framework into UK general practice and its impact on GP work. I then conducted work on the self-management of multimorbid patients before taking up my current post as a Research Fellow within the Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.

The work I currently lead upon focuses on the issue of diagnosis. Diagnostic errors are thought to be common within primary care settings. Whilst there is evidence that this is the case in other countries, no study to date has provided a reliable estimate of the diagnostic error rate in UK general practice. I am leading a team utilising case note review methods in order to provide such an estimate. In addition to this piece of work, I am conducting related projects which seek to evaluate the utility of differential diagnostic generators as well as develop and provide training for clinicians to manage diagnostic uncertainty. 

Senior Research Fellow

I am a Senior Research Fellow within the Unit of Primary Care and Population Sciences at the University of Southampton. My research involves the application of psychological science to challenging issues in primary medical care. As a research psychologist, I have developed interventions to support patients in self-managing problems such as back pain, severe emotional distress and chronic dizziness.

I am interested in how digital interventions can be used to deliver and increase access to treatment, and also how they can help researchers understand why interventions work.

I also lead a theme of research on distinguishing emotional distress from psychiatric disorder in primary care patients. I draw on a diverse range of approaches including randomised controlled trials, cross sectional studies and qualitative methods to address questions with the aim of improving the health of patients.

Senior Clinical Research Associate (NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer) 

I am dual trained in general practice and public health medicine. I work two days a week as a salaried GP at a practice in Surrey and three days a week as a Senior Clinical Research Associate at the Department of Primary Care & Population Health, UCL.

My current research examines the use of eHealth initiatives to address behaviour change, for example, to help people increase physical activity, to reduce alcohol intake, and to self-manage long-term conditions including mental health. I also have a research interest in the use of financial incentive schemes to improve healthcare and prevention activities in primary care, such as the national Quality & Outcomes Framework.

I am interim lead for the MBBS Social Determinants of Health module at UCL.

Postdoctoral researcher

Karlijn Joling (1982) studied health science and clinical epidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 2012, she obtained her PhD focussing on depression and anxiety in family caregivers of persons with dementia at the VU University Medical Centre Amsterdam. A large part of this research involved an evaluation of the (cost-) effectiveness of a family meetings intervention for family caregivers of persons with dementia. After finishing her thesis, she combined research with a position as a policy officer at the VUmc Alzheimer Centre where she was involved in the development of the Dutch national dementia strategy. Karlijn currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the VUmc department of General Practice and Elderly Care Medicine and is involved in several ongoing research projects on dementia care in community and long term care settings.

During her postdoc, she obtained two fellowship grants from the Dutch Alzheimer’s Society to work at Bangor University in Wales for several months and started collaborating with them on resilience in dementia caregivers and the benefits of art for people with dementia. Since 2015, she is leading a large project that aims to identify best practices in dementia care trajectories by extracting and linking data on the quality and cost of care from routine care registries. Her main expertise is in quantitative data-analyses. She has experience with evaluating the (cost-)effectiveness of complex interventions and analysis of observational data (e.g. prevalence, incidence, risk profiles, diagnostic accuracy). 

Senior researcher

Albine Moser is a nurse by background. She worked as nurse for 19 years in different countries like Austria, USA and the Netherlands. Currently, she is a senior lecturer – researcher at Maastricht University and Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. She is involved in the teaching of nurse practitioners. She has a key role in the implementation of interprofessional education in the Faculty of Healthcare at Zuyd University where seven bachelor programmes are involved: language and speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, creative therapy, nursing, biomedical sciences and midwifery.

At Maastricht University she works at the Department of family medicine and the research programme Implementation of evidence and at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences she works in the research programme Autonomy and participation of chronically ill people.

Albine is the leader of the research theme Methods of patient and public involvement. She is involved in research activities concerning patient and public involvement in research and practice, and recently also in education. She has carried out many research projects always in collaboration with health care institutions. At the moment Albine is the leader of a nation-wide research concerning patient and public involvement in palliative care. Also, she is the leader of a research concerning the development of a quality instrument to get insights in the quality of the professional – patient relationship from the perspective of people who are communication vulnerable. 

Postdoc researcher 

Marieke Perry completed her study of Medicine at the Radboud University

Nijmegen in 2002. In 2006, she finished her general practitioner vocational training. Next, she started a research project at the Radboudumc Geriatric Department. The thesis resulting from this project “Development and evaluation of a Dementia Training Programme for Primary Care” was defended in 2011 and awarded twice.

Since 2006, Marieke enjoyed working as a general practitioner in Zevenaar. At the Geriatric Department she was involved as a postdoc researcher in two projects. In the first project, a two-step elderly screening for frailty in primary care was developed and validated. The second project investigated the implementation and the effects of a digital conference table for frail older patients and their (primary) healthcare professionals. She significantly contributed to the revision of the Dutch Dementia Guideline of the College of Dutch General Practitioners, which was published in 2012.

Since January 2014, Marieke works as a postdoc researcher on a project called DementiaNet that aims to improve integrated primary care for patients with dementia and their informal caregivers. Strategies used are clinical leadership, interprofessional education and quality improvement methods. As co-PI, she is involved in Decidem, an implementation trial that evaluates the effects of advance care planning and shared decision making for dementia patients in primary care. At the department of Primary and Community Care, she and her research team acquired several grants to increase involvement of primary care professionals in the care for older patients with cancer.

Clinician-scientist

Dr. Andrew Pinto is a Public Health and Preventive Medicine specialist and family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital. Dr. Pinto completed his residency at the University of Toronto and his Master’s in Health Policy, Planning and Financing at the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Commonwealth Scholar. Currently, he is a Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. His research is focused on health economics, equity and the evaluation of complex population health interventions.

Senior Research fellow, Programme leader & lecturer

Emma graduated with an honours degree in Medicine from University College Dublin in 2004. She subsequently completed a four-year general practice (GP) training programme and was awarded Membership of the Irish College of General Practitioners (MICGP) in 2009. She continues to work part-time as a GP in North Dublin.

Emma was awarded a Research Training Fellowship for Health Professionals by the HRB in 2012 and completed the national four-year Health Research Board (HRB) Structured Population and Health-services and Research Education (SPHeRE) PhD programme. Her thesis was a prospective cohort study examining the prediction of adverse health outcomes in older people attending general practice. Emma’s research interests relate to optimising prescribing and managing multimorbidity in general practice, and she has a particular interest in the use of clinical prediction tools to predict health outcomes.

She has worked as a Clinical Research fellow at the HRB-funded national Centre for Primary Care Research (CPCR) since 2011. The CPCR is led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in conjunction with Trinity College Dublin, National University of Ireland, Galway and Queens University, Belfast. In 2016 she commenced the role of Senior Research Fellow of the CPCR, with responsibility for coordinating the centre’s overall programme of research.

Emma also works as a lecturer in the Department of General Practice in RCSI and has completed a Higher Diploma in Clinical Education. She has a particular interest in teaching communication skills following an adverse event or error. 

Senior lecturer 

Katharine is an academic GP at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Before completing her doctorate, Katharine completed a Master’s degree in Bioethics and Health Law.

Her research interests include patient safety in primary care; safer prescribing for older people in primary care; ethical issues in general practice; and medical professional regulation. Katharine is involved in teaching medical students, and continues to work clinically part time in a central city practice.