Catherine Woods

Catherine Woods is a Research Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. She is also a visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton.

Catherine is an experienced social science researcher with eleven years’ experience of applied primary care research. She uses a range of qualitative methods and has specialist training in Conversation Analysis (CA). Her research is centred on finding ways to optimise healthcare communication between patients, caregivers and clinicians to promote shared understandings about health, illness and appropriate treatment(s). Her recent work has focussed on mental health, including a comparative study about how emotional cues are volunteered and discussed during remote telephone versus face-to-face consultations, and an interview study about deprescribing long-term antidepressants. She has also led studies about the management common infections in primary care (both in-hours and out-of-hours).

Catherine is currently working with Dr Rebecca Barnes on an NIHR-funded mixed methods programme of research exploring the management of patient risk in urgent primary care (called PRIMA).