Dr Lauren Ramsey

Background

Lauren has a background in applied health services research, with a particular focus on patient and family involvement in patient safety. She originally graduated from The University of Leeds after studying Psychology and completed her PhD in 2020 with the University of Leeds and the NIHR-funded Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.

Her PhD is focused on understanding how healthcare staff respond to and use online patient feedback to inform improvements to the quality and safety of care in a hospital setting and her work is a core project within the Patient Involvement in Patient Safety (PIPS) theme of work. Via her PhD, she conducted a systematic literature review, developed a typology of the ways in which healthcare staff respond to online patient feedback, and adopted an exploratory approach as part of an ethnographic study. Her PhD was supervised by Professor Jane O’Hara, Professor Rebecca Lawton and Associate Professor Laura Sheard. She also worked with James Munro from Care Opinion throughout this work.

Prior to beginning her PhD, Lauren worked with the team at The Bradford Institute for Health Research, assisting in various projects aiming to improve the quality and safety of care in the NHS. She also worked as a Research Assistant on a European Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) at The University of Leeds, and at Inhealthcare, helping to develop digital health solutions for the NHS.

Since completing her PhD, she has worked as a Research Fellow on various projects within the PIPS theme, including the co-design of a real-time safety feedback tool for mental health inpatients, a qualitative exploration of how people have co-created safety during Covid-19, a qualitative exploration of patient safety for those with learning disabilities and their carers, and an RCT designed to help older adults transition from hospital to home.

She currently works as a Senior Research Fellow on the Patient and Family Involvement in Serious Incident Investigations (PFI-SII) project. This is a study that aims to co-design processes and resources to guide the role of patients and families in serious incident investigations in acute and mental health care, and at a national level. Her role is diverse and involves activities including conducting a scoping review, interviewing different stakeholders, facilitating co-design work, and using ethnographic methods.

Research interests

Lauren has a broad range of research interests that centre on the quality and safety of care in the NHS. More specifically, Lauren is interested in how both digital health technologies and patient and family involvement in patient safety can help to both improve care from the perspectives of key stakeholders and alleviate pressures on the NHS. Lauren is also a keen qualitative methodologist, with a particular interest in how qualitative methodological approaches can help to answer key research questions in this area.