Edinburgh Napier University

Biography

Nicola is a qualified nurse (adult and children) and health visitor. After working in all these areas she moved into NHS healthcare management working in various clinical effectiveness/governance posts at local and national level.

Nicola started her academic career in 2002 and has since worked on adult and child nursing pre-registration programmes. She has extensive experience of developing health researchers through post-graduate module and programme leadership as well as supervision of masters and doctoral students. Nicola is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

She is an experienced researcher and principal investigator. Her key research focus is on the (self-) management of long-term conditions in children and adults. Her PhD (2013) was a critical analysis of evidence based practice – the case of asthma action plans. Increasingly her research focuses on the mental health and well-being of children and young people.

Her methodological expertise is in qualitative evidence synthesis using meta-ethnography. She was a member of the eMERGe team which secured NIHR funding to develop innovative international guidance aimed at improving transparency and quality of meta-ethnography reporting.

Nicola is passionate about the social history of nursing and has expert knowledge of the topic. She strongly believes that understanding the profession's past including issues of gender, power, race and ethnicity helps nurses better understand contemporary issues affecting health care practice and policy.

Nicola welcomes contact from potential collaborators and research students.