Alison Chisholm

My academic background is in health psychology and health services research. I have expertise in patient experiences of health care, quality improvement, decision-making, staff experiences and the regulation of healthcare professionals. I have carried out research on patient experiences of a wide range of conditions including maternity, cancer and heart disease. 

I joined the Department in April 2016 to work with Professor Louise Locock on the NIHR-funded US-PEx study which aimed to better understand how NHS frontline staff use different types of patient feedback to improve health services and develop tools to help them make better use of this data. 

I am currently working with Dr Lisa Hinton and Professor Richard McManus on the BuMP trial, a large randomised controlled trial to determine whether self-monitoring of blood pressure can help detect hypertension (raised blood pressure) and pre-eclampsia earlier, resulting in faster access to treatment.

Self-monitoring has the potential to improve the detection and management of raised blood pressure in pregnancy by providing much more data on blood pressure without a large increase in burden for women, who might not need to attend hospital so often. Increasing women’s involvement through self-monitoring could underpin a new cost-effective model of care during pregnancy which improves women's experiences and delivers quality outcomes.

I am carrying out the qualitative process evaluation, using qualitative interviews and observations to understand women's experiences of monitoring their own blood pressure and healthcare professionals' experiences of incorporating home readings into routine clinical practice. The findings of the process evaluation will inform the interpretation of the trial outcomes and the refinement of the intervention. 

.