Principal Research Fellow,
Deputy Director and Qualitative Lead, Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research Group
Qualitative Evaluation Lead, ActEarly City Collaboratory
Email: Laura.Sheard@bthft.nhs.uk
Tel: 01274 382828
Twitter: @laurainbradford
Background
Laura was appointed Senior Research Fellow in 2012, and became Principal Research Fellow in 2018. By background, Laura is a sociologist and a health services researcher. She undertook her doctoral research at the University of Leeds and was awarded her PhD (Sociology) in 2010. Laura’s skills are mainly around qualitative methodology and analysis, process evaluations and trial management. Laura works across research teams at the Bradford Institute for Health Research and leads several studies about patient safety, patient experience, prisoner health and public health.
Laura’s most discussed and talked about paper to date was published in February 2017 in Social Science & Medicine (available here). It currently has an Altmetric score of over 200. The paper proposes a conceptual framework to understand why ward staff struggle to make improvements based on patient feedback. Laura is the author of over 40 peer reviewed publications. She is principal investigator on the NIHR funded Improving the Quality of Primary Care for Prisoners (£659, 000) study and co-applicant on four NIHR grant applications totalling £9.3m of research income.
Laura is a panel member of the Yorkshire and North East Research for Patient Benefit Advisory Board and an Associate Editor for the journal Trials.
Research interests
Applied health services research, medical sociology, innovative qualitative analysis, conceptual framework generation, prisoner health, public health, patient experience, patient safety, implementation science.
Recent Funding Awarded
Patient and family involvement in serious incident investigations: Developing and testing national and local guiding processes” (2019-2022). £894,638. NIHR HS&DR. Co-app @ 10%
Understanding and improving the quality of primary care for prisoners (2019-2022). £659,000. NIHR HS&DR. Principal Investigator @ 30%
ActEarly: a City Collaboratory approach to early promotion of good health and wellbeing (2019-2024). £6,500,000. Medical Research Council. Lead for qualitative evaluation @ 5% (match funded to 20%)
Using Islamic religious settings to prevent obesity in South Asian children (2017-2018). £100,000. NIHR Programme Development Grants. Lead for qualitative work-package. Co-app @ 10%
Partners at Care Transitions: Improving patient experience and safety at transitions of care (2016- 2021). £2,300,000. NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research. Lead for evaluation work-package. Co-app @ 10%
Understanding and enhancing how hospital staff learn from and act on patient experience data (2015-2018). £385,000. NIHR HS&DR. Lead for two work-packages: qualitative and evaluation. Co-app @ 20%
Exploring the use patient experience feedback in prison healthcare: a small scale qualitative study with prisoners and staff (2017-2018). £15,000. CLAHRC Yorkshire and Humber RCF. Principal Investigator @7%
Recent Publications
Sheard, L. (2020). “Personal blog: How can social theory help us understand current attitudes in the UK in response to the global Covid-19 outbreak?“
Sheard L. & Peacock, R. (2020), “Fiddling while Rome burns? Conducting research with healthcare staff when the NHS is in crisis” Journal of Health Organization and Management. EarlyCite. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHOM-04-2019-0105
McHugh S, Lawton R, O’Hara J, Sheard L. Does team reflexivity impact teamwork and communication in interprofessional hospital based healthcare teams? A systematic review and narrative synthesis BMJ Quality & Safety. 2020, Online first
Ramsey L, Sheard L, Lawton R, O Hara J. How do healthcare staff respond to patient experience feedback online? A typology of responses published on Care Opinion. Patient Experience Journal. 2019;6(2):42-50
Hughes L, Sheard L, Pinkney L, Lawton RL. Excellence in elective hip and knee surgery: what does it look like? A positive deviance approach. J Health Serv Res Policy. 2019 Sep 7:1355819619867350
Sheard L, Marsh C. How to analyse longitudinal data from multiple sources in qualitative health research: the pen portrait analytic technique. BMC Medical Research Methodology. 2019 2019/08/02;19(1):169.
Mills T, Lawton R, Sheard L. Improving Patient Experience in Hospital Settings: Assessing the Role of Toolkits and Action Research Through a Process Evaluation of a Complex Intervention. Qualitative health research. 2019 Jun 16:1049732319855960.
Marsh C, Peacock R, Sheard L, Hughes L, Lawton R. Patient experience feedback in UK hospitals: What types are available and what are their potential roles in quality improvement (QI)? Health Expect. 2019 Apr 23. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.12885
Mills T, Lawton R, Sheard L. Advancing complexity science in healthcare research: the logic of logic models. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2019 Mar 12;19(1):55
Sheard L, Peacock R, Marsh C, Lawton L. (2018). What’s the problem with patient experience feedback? A macro and micro understanding, based on findings from a three site UK quality study. Health Expectations, Online first 22nd September, doi: 10.1111/hex.12829.
Baxter R, O’Hara J, Murray J, Sheard L, Cracknell A, Foy R, et al. Partners at Care Transitions: exploring healthcare professionals’ perspectives of excellence at care transitions for older people. BMJ open. 2018 Sep 19;8(9):e022468.
O’Hara J, Reynolds C, Moore S, Armitage G, Sheard L, Marsh C, Watt I, Wright J, Lawton R. (2018). What can patients tell us about the quality and safety of hospital care? Findings from a UK multicentre survey study. BMJ Quality and Safety, 27:673-682.
Sheard L, Marsh C, O’Hara J, Armitage G, Wright J, Lawton R. (2017). The Patient Feedback Response Framework – Understanding why UK hospital staff find it difficult to make improvements based on patient feedback: A qualitative study. Social Science & Medicine, 178, 19-27
Hardicre N, Birks Y, Murray J, Sheard L, Hughes L, Heyhoe J, Cracknell A, Lawton R. (2017) Partners at Care Transitions (PACT): exploring older peoples’ experiences of transitioning from hospital to home in the UK: protocol for an observation and interview study of older people and their families to understand patient experience and involvement in care at transitions. BMJ Open, 7:e018054. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-018054
McCaughan D, Sheard L, Cullum N, Dumville J, Chetter I. (2017). Patients perceptions and experiences of living with a surgical wound healing by secondary intention: A qualitative study. International Journal of Nursing Studies 77, 29-38
Sheard L, Jackson C, Lawton R. (2017). How is success achieved by individuals innovating for patient safety and quality in the NHS? BMC Health Services Research, 17:640
Sheard L, Marsh C, O’Hara J, Armitage G, Wright J, Lawton R. (2017). Exploring how ward staff engage with the implementation of a patient safety intervention: a UK-based qualitative process evaluation. BMJ Open 7(7):e014558.
Scantlebury A, Watt I, Sheard L, Wright J, Adamson J. (2017). Implementing electronic records in NHS secondary care organisations in England. British Medical Bulletin. 1/9.
Scantlebury A, Sheard L, Watt I, Cairns P, Wright J, Adamson J. (2017) Exploring the implementation of an electronic record into a maternity unit: a qualitative study using Normalisation Process Theory. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 17(1):4.
Lawton R, O’Hara J, Sheard L, Armitage G, Cocks K, Buckley H, Corbacho B, Reynolds R, Marsh C, Moore S, Watt I, Wright J. (2017) Can patient involvement improve patient safety? A cluster randomized control trial of the Patient Reporting and Action for a Safe Environment (PRASE) Intervention. BMJ Quality & Safety, DOI: 1136/bmjqs-2016-005570
O’Hara J, Lawton R, Armitage G, Sheard L, Marsh C, Cocks K, McEachan R, Reynolds C, Watt I, Wright J. (2016). The Patient Reporting and Action of a Safe Environment (PRASE) intervention: a feasibility study. BMC Health Services Research DOI: 10.1186/s12913-016-1919-
Clarke A, Adamson J, Watt I, Sheard L, Cairns P, Wright J. (2016). “The impact of electronic records on patient safety: a qualitative study” BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 16:62
Clarke A, Adamson J, Sheard L, Cairns P, Watt I, Wright J. (2015). “Implementing electronic patient record systems (EPRs) into England’s acute, mental health and community care Trusts: a mixed methods study” BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 15:85
Lawton R, O’Hara J, Sheard L, Reynolds C, Cocks K, Armitage G, Wright J. (2015). “Can staff and patient perspectives on hospital safety predict harm-free care? An analysis of staff and patient survey data and routinely collected outcomes” BMJ Quality & Safety 0, 1-8
Buckley H, Cocks K, Lawton R, O’Hara J, Sheard L, Marsh C, et al. Outcomes to measure patient safety: the patient reporting and action for a safe environment (PRASE) trial. Trials. 2015 11/16;16(Suppl 2):P52-P.
Sheard L, O’Hara J, Armitage G, Wright J, Cocks K, McEachan R, Watt I, Lawton R. (2014). “Evaluating the PRASE patient safety intervention – a multi-centre, cluster trial with a qualitative process evaluation: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial” BMC Trials 15: 420
[Edited book]. Wright N, Gerada C & Sheard L. (eds) (2013) RCGP Guide to the Management of Substance Misuse in Primary Care. London, RCGP.