Meet the Team

Professor Bridget Johnston, FRCN

Forum Chair

Clinical Professor of Nursing and Palliative Care, at University of Glasgow. This a joint post between the University of Glasgow and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in Scotland 50/50. Also, Director of Research for the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing, University of Glasgow. 

Bridget is a registered nurse and has a clinical, educational and research background in palliative and end of life care. Bridget leads a palliative care research group at the University of Glasgow. The work of the group is underpinned by patient and public involvement.  Recent and current projects include; Palliative and end of life care in the prison population in Scotland; Role of nurse in multimorbidity: views of care at end the end of life; testing a music listening intervention in hospice care as well as exploring bereavement support in the care home population. 

Bridget supports a number of PhD students from across the world doing palliative care studies. Bridget is also involved in supporting and building capacity in nurse clinical academics. Bridget has published widely with over 100 peer reviewed publications. Bridget was previously editor in chief of the International Journal of Palliative Nursing. Bridget is Senior editor BMC Nursing and Section Editor (end of life care) Current Opinions in Supportive and Palliative Care.

Bridget tweets as @BridgetJohnst

Parveen Ali

Professor of Nursing and Gender Based Violence 

University of Sheffield and Doncaster & Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals (DBTH)

Professor Parveen Ali has a joint position at the University of Sheffield and Doncaster & Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals (DBTH). Prof Ali joined the School of Nursing and Midwifery in 2014. She is a Registered Nurse, Registered Nurse Teacher and Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy and Fellow of Faculty of Public Health. Prof Ali leads MMedSci Advanced Nursing Studies and is a Deputy Director of Research and Innovation in the Health Sciences School. Her role at the DBTH aims to develop research capacity among Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals. Prof Ali is Editor-in Chief of International Nursing Review.

Prof Ali completed her PhD from University of Sheffield in 2012. She completed MScN and BScN from Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. Her research focuses on gender-based violence, domestic abuse, inequalities in health related to gender and ethnicity, and health care professionals’ preparation. She is a mixed method researcher and has led and contributed to many projects around her research and teaching interests. She is an expert in developing and delivering effective and interactive face to face and online learning material. She is the developer and lead educator of Supporting victims of domestic violence and domestic abuse training game.

Prof Ali’s research focuses on gender-based violence, especially intimate partner violence from the perspective of victims and perpetrators, health inequalities, consanguinity and genetics, and inequalities in health care experiences and health outcomes and how reparation and training of health professionals such as doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals can contribute to tackling such inequalities. She serves on various grant awarding bodies and research ethics committees in the UK and other countries. She is a recipient of various awards including Mary Seacole leadership Award , Sigma’s Emerging Nurse Researcher Award for Europe and Pakistani Diaspora Achievement Award.

Jane Coad

Professor in Children and Family Nursing  
Lead for Centre for Children and Young People’s Health Research (CYPHR), School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Nottingham University  

Director for Strategy and Clinical Research 
Centre for Care Excellence. University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire

Jane has over 25 years drawing on her arts background and as a Registered Children’s Nurse. She specifically focuses her research programme on children, young people and young adults with complex needs and their families. Jane uses arts-based participatory qualitative methods, systematic reviewing, mixed method surveys and complex evaluation projects nationally and internationally to transform care and outcomes. Jane also has spent many years championing and supporting Nurses careers specifically in terms of research.

Jane is currently lead for the Research Centre - Children and Young People’s Research (known as CYPHR) in the School of Health Sciences in the University of Nottingham aiming to improve children and young people’s health care and research. Jane is also a Director within Centre for Care Excellence, University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire.

In terms of professional recognition, Jane was awarded a prestigious Royal College of Nursing Fellowship in 2013 for lifetime research and leads on a number of local, national and international groups and committees holding substantive posts in the field of Child Health including Co-ordinator for Paediatric Nursing Association of Europe (PNAE) and Chair the Clinical Academic Research Implementation Network (CARIN), Council of Deans of Health.

Keith Couper

Associate Professor in Emergency and Critical Care, University of Warwick

Keith is a clinical academic, holding appointments at the University of Warwick and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation NHS Trust.

Keith’s clinical and research interests lie in critical care, particularly cardiac arrest. He undertakes clinical trials, observational studies, and evidence syntheses in these areas. 

Barbara Farquharson

Barbara has been an RGN for 30 years. She worked clinically for 13 years in a wide range of clinical areas: general medicine, CCU, HIV prevention, as a Specialist BHF Community Cardiac Nurse and as a Team Leader at NHS 24.

She undertook her PhD 2004-2007 after being awarded an NMAHP Research Training Scheme Studentship and has worked in research and teaching since then. 

She has worked on funded projects relating to stress in nursing and obtained funding as Principal Investigator for projects aiming to reduce cardiac symptom delay and to increase rates of CPR in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the NMAHP Research Unit, University of Stirling after being awarded a British Heart Foundation NMAHP Career Development Fellowship in 2020. Her fellowship study is exploring the critical role of ambulance service call-takers in facilitating bystander CPR in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and exploring the potential of adding techniques from behavioural science to the protocols call-handlers follow in order to increase rates of initiation.  

Dr Gordon Hill

Gordon is the Assistant Head for International in the School of Health and Life Sciences and the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Public Health Education at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Gordon has a background in clinical research, starting his first clinical research nurse post in 1994. He has also held posts in the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, in Edinburgh and at Edinburgh Napier University, where he was the Programme Leader for an MSc in clinical research, delivered in Singapore and a post graduate certificate in clinical research, in the UK. Gordon also established the Scottish Research Nurse and Co-ordinators Network (SRNCN) in 2005 and remains an expert in the field.

Gordon supports PhD and Professional Doctorate students and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Research in Nursing.

Gordon tweets as @gordonhill1

Heather Iles Smith

Heather holds a joint Chair of Nursing between the School of Health and Society, the University of Salford and Chief Nursing Officers Corporate Nursing Team, Northern Care Alliance Foundation NHS Trust.

Areas of her research interest include long term conditions, psychological wellbeing, and healthcare technologies. Current research includes, NIHR funded COVID Nurse project; an RCT investigating a nursing protocol designed by nurses, to support transactional nursing care for non-invasively ventilated COVID-19 patients. The HEE funded U-INconti study uses real world data to investigate the prevalence and incidence of urinary incontinence (UI) in older women during secondary care admissions, and nurses’ views of delivering care to these women during an admission are also explored.

Heathers joint role involves system wide research capacity and capability building for nurses, midwives and AHP’s. This includes creating/maximising opportunities for increased research engagement and research and clinical academic career pathways across organisations. She is also an experienced PhD supervisor and mentor to HEE/NIHR ICA Interns and a number of Applied Health Research pre-doctoral, doctoral and post-doctoral candidates.

One of Heathers National roles isas lead for the NIHR nursing and midwifery Incubator, which aims to increase the number and quality of personal fellowship applications by nurses and midwives to NIHR awards. Other national roles includes membership of the Council of Deans Clinical Academic Roles and Career Pathways Implementation Network (CARINS) and the CoD Research Council, Association of UK Lead Research Nurses (AUKLRN) (previously Chair) and membership of the CNO for England Research Strategy Implementation Group.