Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Rachel Spencer

Job Title
Associate Clinical Professor
Department
WMS - Health Sciences
Phone
51193
Web Link
Research Interests

I am an academic GP and my research interest is in all aspects of patient safety in primary care. I have been involved in prescribing safety research for the last ten years and helped to develop prescribing indicators used by the RCGP and the CPRD. I worked on the multi-centre NIHR patient safety toolkit project for general practices which was adopted by the RCGP. My doctoral work focused on safety of communication at the interface of primary and secondary care. My NIHR advanced fellowship https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/med/research/hscience/apc/qualityandsafety/gpmate/ allows me to develop this work to produce resources for primary care and for patients to improve safety at the interface of primary and secondary care. I am a mixed methods researcher familiar with most methodological techniques and have particular skills in RAND UCLA consensus methodology. I work with West-Midlands ARC and Warwick Business School and am always interested to give a general practice view on patient safety project, collaborating within the department and externally. If you are interested in joining a patient safety special interest group at the University please contact me. I have an interest in supervising post-graduate research on patient safety, primary care and participatory methods, please contact me directly if you are considering undertaking a PhD at WMS that you think I might supervise.

Biography

I was an academic GP trainee funded by the NIHR from 2011-2013 and worked with Professor Anthony Avery at the University of Nottingham. I completed my doctoral work with the same team between 2014 and 2018 funded by an NIHR career progression fellowship. I have worked as a part-time salaried GP in Coventry for the last 10 years. In 2018 I was the West Midlands CRN First 5 research champion promoting research in practice to young GPs across the region. In the first part of 2019 I undertook a sabbatical to New Zealand to work as a GP there. I'm now an Associate Clinical Professor in the Unit of Academic Primary Care - I'm usually on site at the medical school on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Tuesday and Friday I work as a GP at Engleton House practice in Coventry. If you are one of my NHS patients please do not use the above email to contact me. Instead please contact your general practice in the normal manner.

Title Funder Award start Award end
Increasing the uptake of annual health checks in children and young people aged 14-17 years with learning disability National Institute for Health Research (NIHR DoH) 01 Mar 2025 29 Feb 2028
A mixed methods evaluation of how general practice is engaging with the NHS net zero goal, an what is needed to promote decarbonisation (The GPNET-0 study) (NIHR HS&DR STAGE 2) National Institute for Health Research (NIHR DoH) 01 Sept 2023 28 Feb 2026
GP Management After Transition Events (GP-MATE) - Developing an intervention to assist older patients' communication with their GP practice after discharge from hospital in order to improve patient safety (NIHR Advanced Fellowship St2, Outline: 66387) National Institute for Health Research (NIHR DoH) 01 Sept 2021 31 Aug 2025
OID for GP MATE GP Management After Transition Events (GP-MATE) - Developing an intervention to assist older patients' communication with their GP practice after discharge from hospital in order to improve patient safety AWARD 69204 - R.MRSS.1133 (NIHR Advanced Fellowship St2, Outline: 66387) National Institute for Health Research (NIHR DoH) 01 Nov 2023 31 Jan 2025
Evaluating the ReSPECT process in the community setting. National Institute for Health Research (NIHR DoH) 01 May 2021 30 Apr 2023