SAPPHIRE

Our research encompasses understanding problems in healthcare quality and safety, informing the design of interventions that could help, and conducting process evaluations of improvement programmes and interventions. We have significant expertise in the use of qualitative and ethnographic methods to provide insights about what is valuable to different groups of stakeholders, where improvement is needed and how interventions are working in ‘real-world’ practice. We capture stakeholder perspectives and track systems and processes that span different healthcare settings. Working within diverse contexts across primary, community, secondary and tertiary care, we contribute to better understandings of what works (and doesn’t work), for whom, and how. We also conduct clinically focused translational research to improve outcomes for populations with complex health needs across the care continuum, particularly in kidney disease, mental health, ageing and end of life care, in partnership with clinical colleagues at NHS partner organisations.

Our aim is to foster a cohesive working environment through supportive supervision, mentorship and regular informal group meetings as a means of sharing ideas, presenting research and receiving multi-disciplinary feedback. See ‘People’ for more information on research interests and experience.

We are a partner in The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute at the University of Cambridge, and have an established record of collaborating with policymakers and other research groups in the UK and internationally. We have strong links with the NHS and NIHR, locally and nationally. SAPPHIRE members lead themes in both the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) East Midlands, specifically the implementation theme, and the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC), specifically the Enhancing Cultures Of Safety theme. We work closely with the highly respected LOROS Hospice and host academic staff involved with LOROS education and research activity.

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