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Deborah Biggerstaff

Job Title
Associate Professor (Teaching Focussed)
Department
WMS - Health Sciences
Phone
+44(0)24 7652 8206
Research Interests
  • Psychological and behavioural aspects of health and health services provision.
  • Women's health issues, especially postnatal care.
  • Methodologies as applied to health, to include both quantitative and qualitative methods of enquiry (e.g. mixed methods, interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative methods in health).
  • How healthcare professionals integrate patient values and individual preferences with evidence-based healthcare.
  • Shared decision making: Do the public share practitioners' views about best evidence (research collaboration with Prof Liz Robinson, Dept. Psychology).
  • Ethical issues as applied to health research.
  • Adolescent developmental and health psychology (with Prof. Sarah Stewart-Brown): an evaluation of the Parent Child Closeness Scale: A re-assessment of its psychometric properties.

Much of my research focuses on shared decision making in health care. I am currently researching on phronesis in medical communities a research collaboration with the University of Birmingham and University of Nottingham, funded by AHRC
Phronesis and the Medical Community.

Biography

Deborah Biggerstaff is a Chartered Health Psychologist, and Senior Fellow, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. She bred and showed horses since a child before working in the NHS for several years, then studying for her degree, graduating from Warwick with a first class honours degree in Psychology. She then spent several years at University of Birmingham and Coventry University before returning to Warwick as Research Fellow, Centre for Health Services Studies, Warwick Business School. Previously Lecturer, Health Psychology, MBChB programme, WMS, she currently teaches across the Masters programmes leading on supervision and teaching on qualitative research, psychological and behavioural medicine, research methods and critical appraisal. Deborah leads the core 'super-module' Understanding Research and Critical Appraisal (UReCA), in addition to leading Evidence and Values in Clinical Education, for Masters in Medical Education and co-lead for Projects and Dissertations for PGT programme. In addition she currently supervises several doctoral students in WMS. Her research interests include all aspects of health services delivery, women's health, behavioural aspects of health and wellbeing, phenomenology, and narratives of self in relation to healthcare. She has research interests in ethnicity and cultural health, having previously held posts, collaborating with Centre for Evidence in Ethnicity, Health & Diversity (CEEHD), Mary Seacole Research Centre, De Montfort University. Recent completed work includes an examination of the role of 'phronesis', or practical wisdom, in clinical education; a research collaboration with Universities of Birmingham, Nottingham and Cumbria. She has a longstanding interest in how healthcare professionals integrate patient values and individual preferences with evidence-based healthcare, and the role of the arts in healthcare.

Title Funder Award start Award end
AHRC Phronesis and the Medical Community via UoB. AHRC 01 Mar 2015 28 Feb 2018
Systematic Review of Racial Inequalities in Health Education De Montfort University 01 Jan 2004 30 Jul 2004
Creating culturally Sensitive Healthcare Environments (CULHEN) De Montfort University 02 Feb 2004 07 May 2004

Understanding Research and Critical Appraisal (core module Drectorate Accredited Masters Programme)

 

Link to Department of Psychology