Rachel Muir is a CLAHRC HEE NCEL post-doctoral Fellow and the Senior Matron for the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at UCLH. Her clinical background is in Critical Care, Accident and Emergency and Clinical Research, and she has a PhD in Social Sciences. Rachel is interested in knowledge mobilisation, arts based participatory methodologies, and patient experience in clinical trials. Rachel was awarded an international travel scholarship by the Florence Nightingale Foundation in 2013/2014 to visit Harvard, Toronto, and McGill in Canada to learn from innovative participatory projects to improve patient experience, and she is currently developing applications for post-doctoral funding as part of her CLAHRC HEE NCEL fellowship.
Category: project-11
Samantha Machen
Samantha completed an undergraduate Masters of Nursing Science (MNurSci) degree at the University of Nottingham before working as qualified Intensive Care nurse at the East Midlands Major Trauma Centre in Nottingham. She later completed a MSc at The London School of Economics and Political Science in International Health Policy before joining UCL for her PhD. Her research interests include patient safety, specifically avoidable harm, quality improvement and the role of external and internal governance systems- having previously worked with the Care Quality Commission as an Inspector of NHS Trusts in the UK.
Project Summary
This PhD aims to carry out observational research on wards to ascertain the attitudes and cultures of safety in regards to medicines safety. The methods will be ethnographic in nature, involving spending an extended period of time in each clinical setting to acquire a detailed understanding of the tacit conventions and social relations practiced within and between different professional communities that constitute different ‘safety cultures’. In each setting, non-participant observations and formal and informal interviews will be used to study the everyday practice of medication safety and develop ideas for the intervention in consultation with healthcare professionals. Different settings within the hospital will be studied (for example surgery, admissions areas and intensive care) to ascertain the importance of ward culture upon safety cultures and medicines safety.
