Speakers

We have a wide range of speakers taking part in the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) European Regional Symposium 2019.

Keynote speaker biographies

John Brassey

I’ve been involved in evidence-based health care for over twenty years and the main focus of my work has revolved around answering clinical or policy questions using the best available evidence.  A particular interest has been using ‘rapid’ methods to obtain these results.  To that end I started the Trip Database (www.tripdatabase.com), which is still the major outlet for my work. More recently I have started exploring automated techniques, such as machine learning and natural language processing.

Professor Kay Cooper

Kay is Clinical Professor of Allied Health Professions, a joint appointment between Robert Gordon University and NHS Grampian. Kay is also Director of the Scottish Centre for Evidence-based, Multi-professional practice: a Joanna Briggs Institute Centre of Excellence. Kay's research focuses on self-management of long-term conditions, and digital interventions to facilitate self-management and promote physical and mental wellbeing. Kay also has an interest in health service delivery research and a passion for supporting practicing Allied Health Professions to get into research.

@AHPkaycooper

Sarah Cross

Sarah undertook registered general nurse training at Birmingham college of Nurse Education in 1987 moving to Cardiff in 1995. On Qualifying she took a post in communicable and tropical disease medicine and thereafter has worked within thoracic medicine with an Adult cystic fibrosis unit, and also renal, gastroenterology and emergency medical nursing. On moving to Aneurin Bevan University Health Board she developed her interest within cardiology, taking a role as CNS in Cardiac Rehabilitation and then Heart Failure services. Sarah achieved her MSc in advanced practice and is a non- medical prescriber within her role as lead for the Heart failure Parenteral Diuretic service. She is currently seconded to Cardiff University as an associate lecturer and is undertaking her PGCE for health care professionals.

Tom Grace RMN MSc LLM PGCE BIA

I have worked in mental health services since 1987.

My first role was working as a staff nurse and DCN in an acute psychiatric admission unit. Following this I worked as a team lead in substance misuse and then as a ward manager in psychosocial interventions and mental health rehabilitation. I then moved into a Senior Nurse role managing within adult community mental health and then onto develop and manage a psychiatric liaison team in a busy DGH.

My current role is that of lead for the Gwent Deprivation of Liberty safeguarding consortium and I retain a clinical role as a Best Interest Assessor (DoLs). The consortium is a partnership between ABUHB and the 5 Local authorities within Greater Gwent. The team manages the Deprivation of Liberty safeguarding process on behalf of 6 supervisory bodies.

I have a keen interest in the law and healthcare, having obtained a Masters in Law at Cardiff Law School. In addition to managing a clinical team and retaining a clinical role I also teach as part of my role within the LHB and lecture on the Law and Ethics module for mental health students at University of South Wales.

In 2016 I was fortunate enough to win the Chief Nursing Officer for Wales award at the RCN Nurse of the year ceremony.

Denise Hockey

Denise’s nursing carer has always had a strong cardiac focus; after qualifying she spent some time in the acute sector on a medical admissions ward with a Cardiac monitoring bay. During this time she undertook diploma modules in teaching and assessing and cardiac and respiratory care, this was later followed by an Honours degree in Acute Cardiac Nursing, with her dissertation looking at Heart Failure patients at end of life care and palliation. To support her passion to providing high quality care at the end of a person’s life, she became an Advanced Care Planning Champion  As her career developed she now holds a position as Heart Failure Specialist Nurse and undertook her MSC in Advanced Clinical Practitioner, as well as being an independent prescriber. Denise worked with the BHF during 2011-2013 on their introduction intravenous and subcutaneous diuretics into the community project with 12 sites around the UK taking part; resulting in a publication of an article dated 2013. Denise is the Welsh specialist nurse delegate for the heart failure domain expert group for NICOR National Audit, she is also part of the All Wales Cardiac Rehabilitation and Heart Failure working group which works closely with the Cardiac network.

Professor Billie Hunter

Billie Hunter CBE is the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) Professor of Midwifery at Cardiff University, Wales UK and Director of a WHO Collaborating Centre for Midwifery Development. A Fellow of the RCM, she holds Visiting Chairs at Surrey and Nottingham Universities in the UK and is Adjunct Professor at University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Billie has been a midwife since 1979, working in UK NHS, voluntary sector and independent midwifery settings, before moving into education and research in 1996. Billie is well known internationally for her research into culture, emotions and relationships in maternity care, and she has published widely. Her aim is to improve care for women and their families by better understanding midwifery work and supporting midwives. Her research projects include studies of midwives’ emotions and resilience, including leading the recent UK WHELM study of midwives’ emotional wellbeing.

In 2016, Billie became the Director of a new WHO Collaborating Centre for Midwifery Development at Cardiff University, one of only 2 centres globally with a unique focus on midwifery. The Collaborating Centre supports WHO in its activities to strengthen midwifery education and practice globally. Billie is involved in a number of WHO advisory groups, as well as co-leading the Midwifery Network within the Global Network of Nursing and Midwifery Collaborating Centres. Billie was awarded a CBE in June 2018 in recognition of her services to midwifery and midwifery education in the UK and Europe.

Professor Angela Kydd

Angela Kydd is a Clinical Professor in Nursing and has a joint post between Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and NHS Grampian. Professor Kydd’s clinical background involved nursing older people in acute care and working as a care home manager. Her interest is the oldest old. She has an MSc in gerontology and a PhD in nursing, which focused on the experiences of frail older people living in a care setting. She has written and taught on gerontology and dementia courses and these have ranged from workshops to a master’s programme in later life. She wrote and taught a nurse specialist programme in gerontological nursing which was revised for use by the World Health Organisation.

She is a partner of a Horizon 2020 project on Ageism, which employs 15 global Early Stage Researchers to undertake PhDs on aspects of Ageism. She is Director of Studies for two of these phd students who are studying at Robert Gordon University. Angela’s clinical role involves working to increase the research capability and capacity of staff in NHS Grampian and she works closely with the Clinical Professor for Allied Health Professionals at NHSG to move the work of the NOSCAR forward.

@angelabkydd

Dr Aled Jones

Aled is Reader in Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality at the School Of Healthcare Sciences (HCARE), Cardiff University. He is a registered adult nurse and mental health nurse with a PhD in Sociology and Health Sciences. He co-leads the Optimising Service Delivery Research Theme within HCARE. His main area of research focuses on two specific dimensions of healthcare quality, namely patient centeredness and patient safety. Current research activity focusses on employee “speaking up” about poor patient care and other breaches of patient safety.

He has published widely in health sciences and social science journals and is currently leading a NIHR HS&DR funded project (2018-2020) “Evaluating the implementation and normalisation of the “Freedom to Speak Up Guardian” role in NHS England” and a co-applicant on the HS&DR funded project (2017-2019) “Understanding how to facilitate continence for people with dementia in acute hospital settings: raising awareness and improving care”. He supervises doctoral students and leads the MSc Health Policy and Health Economics module, while also contributing patient safety and healthcare quality teaching to various Masters and Undergraduate modules.

@AledJonze

Dr Lyn Middleton

Associate Director of Nursing, Corporate Nursing Team, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.

Having started my career in 1978 I am very proud to have celebrated 40 years of nursing, having worked in a variety of surgical settings as a qualified nurse and then as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in the field of pain management. In 2015 I joined the Corporate Nursing Team of the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, a large integrated HB in South Wales, I hold the position of Associate Director of Nursing. My portfolio includes, pre and post registration education, medicines management and prescribing, professional registration and revalidation as well as nurse recruitment. I was fortunate to win the British Journal of Nursing’s Innovation award in 2011, the RCN Nurse of the Year research award in 2013 and was runner up in the RCN Nurse of the Year Chief Nursing Officer category in 2015.

I thoroughly enjoy writing, I have co-written and edited a text book and have written and had published a great number of articles relating to my clinical work and leadership roles. I am committed to encouraging and supporting nurses and midwives within the HB to share their practice widely through publication.

Associate Professor Zachary Munn

Associate Professor Zachary Munn is an advocate for evidence-based healthcare and for ensuring patients receive the best care possible based on the best available evidence. He is the director of the Transfer Science program of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and a systematic review and guideline development methodologist. In his role as Director of Transfer Science, A/Prof Zachary Munn leads the development and coordination of the Institute’s educational courses, the development of systematic review and implementation software tools, and the promotion and publication of the collaboration’s methodologies. A/Prof Munn is the current Chair of the International JBI Scientific Committee. He is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Evidence- based Healthcare and is an Associate Editor for BMC Medical Research Methodology.

Prof Munn is an active member of the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N) Australia and New Zealand regional steering group and the G-I-N Tech group. He is also the Director of the JBI Adelaide GRADE Center, the first GRADE Center in Australia. With a clinical background in medical imaging, nowadays A/Prof Munn is considered an expert systematic review methodologist and implementation scientist.  To find out more visit Professor Zachary Munn's Profile.

Professor Julia Sanders

Julia works as Professor of Clinical Midwifery jointly between Cardiff University and Cardiff & Vale Health Board. Julia is a practising midwife has many years’ experience in the design and delivery of large and complex studies evaluating maternity and early year’s interventions, including the £6m evaluation of the Family Nurse Partnership Programme in England and Scotland. Her main methodological expertise is within randomised trials and the use of routinely collected NHS and other data to answer research questions.

Dr Alison Weightman

Dr Alison Weightman is the Director of the Specialist Unit for Review Evidence (SURE) at Cardiff University; a largely grant funded unit whose staff specialise in carrying out systematic reviews, researching and teaching review techniques. She has over 20 years’ experience as a systematic reviewer and is an author on more than 30 systematic reviews.  Alison is also a Co-convener of the Cochrane Information Retrieval Methods Group. She has a particular interest and expertise in reviewing, and developing systematic review techniques for, complex public health topics including the incorporation of text mining and machine learning methods.

As Head of Research and Academic Engagement, University Library Service, Alison is also involved in a range of development initiatives related to information support for the research and learning and teaching missions of the University, and methods to improve the quality of library services and information resources.

Concurrent speaker biographies

Josep Maria Gutiérrez–Vilaplana

Josep Mª Gutiérrez healthcare activity has been developed with renal patients and their families.  He is currently Evaluation and Knowledge Management Unit head nurse at Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital in Lleida and Associate Professor at Nursing and Physiotherapy Faculty at University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain with a Master in Nursing Sciences degree. He teaches evidence based nursing care I and II. Co-leader of the BPSO program of Best Practice Spotlight Organizations in Lleida His experience with; Group Teaching intervention at Chronic Kidney Disease Unit (CKD) leads him to work on health projects focused on patients and their families. Josep Mª has been a member of the executive committee of professional associations; European Association of Nursing Dialysis and Transplants (EDTNA), Spanish Society of Nephrology Nursing (SEDEN) and Hypertension and Cardiovascular Risk Spanish Association of Nursing (EHRICA). @JosepMGutirrez1

Professor Heather Loveday

Professor of Evidence-based Healthcare and Director of Research at the Richard Wells Research Centre, the University of West London. Director of the Joanna Briggs Centre of Excellence for Evidence-based Healthcare at University of West London

Heather is a national and international leader in the field of infection prevention and control and patient safety having been at the forefront of translational research, national guideline development and the evaluation of IPC implementation for the past 20 years.

She is widely published in the field of infection prevention and control practice and has served in a number of leadership roles in the Infection Prevention Society, most recently as President of the Society (2014-2016).  Heather is currently the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Infection Prevention.

Beatrice Perrenoud

I am an experienced nurse educator, I have a PhD in education sciences, and my clinical background is in intensive care. I have developed and delivered programs, modules and lessons at vocational education, Bachelor and Master level. My teaching and innovation activities focus on evidence-based practice, specifically evidence-based implementation. I am a scientific development officer at the nursing direction of the Lausanne university hospital. I lead, as a project manager, EPB projects and I coach clinicians in this kind of approach. I am a core staff member of the BEST – the Swiss JBI centre of excellence