International Health Humanities Network Membership

I am a nurse, teacher and researcher with extensive experience of leading national evaluation studies of health care initiatives. I also have a long standing interest in the arts and humanities in health and social care education and practice contexts. For a number of years I led an innovative poetry in hospitals project in NHS Grampian and have been involved in teaching relevant arts and humanities approaches to undergraduate students in nursing, medicine and other healthcare disciplines. These activities have resulted in a number of journal publications. In 2007 The Joanna Briggs Institute for Evidence Based Healthcare (University of Adelaide) published my book "In wards, out wards: poems and stories from nursing and beyond".

I am currently leading a multidisciplinary AHRC/Scottish Funding Council study called “Visualising the invisible: developing innovative approaches to visualisation to help NHS staff prevent and control Healthcare Associated Infections” ( March 2011 – January 2013). Our team includes consultant microbiologists, design researchers, and digital artists drawn from the following organisations: Robert Gordon University (IHWR and IDEAS); Glasgow School of Art; Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee; NHS Lanarkshire; NHS Grampian; NHS Education for Scotland; Health Protection Scotland/Scottish Infection Research Network. The project is concerned with the conjunction of place, people and pathogens. It seeks to better understand how healthcare workers envisage pathogens and how digital visualisation of new data about high risk hand touch sites and worker behaviour in these settings might best be developed in a way that is meaningful and may influence awareness and behaviour.