MICHAEL WEST CBE joined The King's Fund as a Senior Fellow in 2013. He is Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology at Lancaster University, Visiting Professor at University College, Dublin, and Emeritus Professor at Aston University, where he was formerly Executive Dean of Aston Business School.
He graduated from the University of Wales in 1973 and received his PhD in 1977. He has authored, edited and co-edited 20 books and has published more than 200 articles in scientific and practitioner publications on teamwork, leadership and culture, particularly in healthcare. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association (APA), the APA Society for Industrial/Organisational Psychology, the Academy of Social Sciences, the International Association of Applied Psychologists and the British Academy of Management.
He led the English Department of Health Policy Research Programme into cultures of quality and safety. He also led the NHS National Staff Survey development and initial implementation. He assisted in developing the national framework on improvement and leadership development in England (Developing People, Improving Care - 2016) and in Northern Ireland in developing the Collective Leadership Strategy for Health and Social Care (2017). He is supporting Health Education and Improvement Wales to develop the national health and care leadership strategy in Wales. He co-chaired with Dame Denise Coia, the two-year inquiry on behalf of the UK General Medical Council into the mental health and wellbeing of doctors Caring for Doctors, Caring for Patients (2019). He led the review for The King’s Fund (commissioned by the RCN Foundation) into the mental health and well-being of nurses and midwives across the UK, The Courage of Compassion: Supporting Nurses and Midwives to Deliver High Quality Care (2020).
He was appointed a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020.
PROFESSOR JEFF NISKER - Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, Western University Scientist - Maternal, Foetal and Newborn Health, Children’s Health Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada.
Jeff is a clinician, researcher, university professor, and writer. His plays and short stories bring health professionals, students, the general public and policy makers to the position of persons immersed in the social inequities of new scientific capacities. Jeff has received many research grants in the basic, clinical and social sciences from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Genome Canada, and other institutions to study prevention of oestrogen-related cancer, ethical and social issues in reproductive-genetics, and the lack of accommodation persons with disability receive for health promotion. Jeff has also co-held a CIHR/Health Canada grant to research public engagement and citizen deliberation through his innovative use of full-length theatre for health policy development. Jeff has authored or co- authored over 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters, many short stories, and seven plays published in the collection From Calcedonies to Orchids: Plays Promoting Humanity and Health Policy. His plays have been performed throughout Canada, in the United States, the UK, Australia and South Africa. Jeff’s new book, the novel Patiently Waiting For, centres on the denial of accommodation of a woman with quadriplegia and the resulting physical and social consequences.
Jeff will be reading from some of his works, Beneath the BMW wheels (CMAJ 2020; 192 (28): E815-E816), Ruth based on the play Calcedonies and She lived with the knowledge (Ars Medica, 2004 1(1): 75-80). "I cannot recommend enough his writing and encourage any conference attendee to seek these out to augment and deepen your engagement with this presentation." (Sarah Tobin)
COLLETTE STRAUGHAIR is a Registered Nurse and Registered Midwife who joined Northumbria University in September 2005 as a Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing. Since joining the university, she has developed a research interest in the concept of compassion in nursing and has recently completed doctoral research to investigate this phenomenon. She has delivered conference presentations and published on this subject and plans to continue investigating this area of interest through post-doctoral research activity. She is Programme Leader to a cohort of adult nursing students and Personal Tutor to a smaller group of personal students. She is involved in the delivery of teaching across all years of the undergraduate nursing programme and student assessment at levels 4, 5, 6 and 7.
Collette commenced her Registered Nurse training in January 1987 and undertook one of the very first programmes in the North East region to qualify with Registered Nurse status and a Diploma in Nursing Sciences, awarded by Newcastle Polytechnic. Following qualification, she worked in various Staff Nurse positions in the specialties of medicine and elderly care. In 1999 she commenced an 18-month programme to achieve Registered Midwife status and graduated with a first class honours degree, subsequently working in Hartlepool and North Tees NHS Trust and City Hospitals Sunderland NHS trust as a Staff Midwife across all areas of midwifery practice in primary and secondary care. She went on to work as a Healthcare Assistant Development Nurse and implemented an educational programme for Healthcare Assistants in the Sunderland area before moving to South Tyneside to take up a role as a Practice Development Nurse in the medicine and elderly care directorate. Since September 2005, Collette has worked at Northumbria University as a Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing and has recently completed her PhD entitled: “Understanding compassion: A constructivist grounded theory study to explore the perceptions of individuals who have experienced nursing care”.
