Senior Research Fellow

Karen joined the University of Leeds in March 2015 as Chair in Nursing Research.  She is a registered nurse and health services researcher. Her expertise extends to fields central to contemporary nursing practice, demonstrated by the development of a programme of clinically and policy relevant research in the areas of the healthcare workforce and care for older people.  In particular, she is interested in evaluating how changes in the composition, organisation and management of the healthcare workforce impact on quality of care and outcomes.  This work has focused (to date) in adult acute and community services and care homes.Over the past decade, she has been associated with research grant income from prestigious and competitively funded sources of more than £4.5m (as PI and co-investigator).  Her work on healthcare assistants makes an important contribution to international debates about the roles of assistants in nursing; roles which are likely to have greater future policy significance.  Her other research interest is the promotion of quality in care for older people in care homes. She has widely published her work.

chronic disease management, coping strategies, coronary heart disease, culturally specific misconceptions, illness beliefs, self-regulatory model.