Cara Bailey is a Professor of End of Life Care at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. She is also the Post-graduate research student lead in the School of Nursing and Midwifery.
Follow Cara on X @CaraBaileyEOLC
Take a look at BRHUmB – Building a Research Hub for Palliative Care in the West Midlands and follow them on X @BRHUm_B
In this episode Cara talks to Amelia about her PhD work where she talked to nurses working in the Emergency Department about their experiences of caring for patients who were dying. This work was triggered by Cara’s observations of how nurses interacted with dying patients, and by her own experiences. She was driven to understand nurses’ responses so that it could lead to improvements in patient care.
Leaning into the discomfort of the situation perfectly describes where [Cara] has placed herself.
Amelia
Cara describes how she was really passionate about her topic area and that helped to sustain her because undertaking a PhD requires tenacity and self-motivation. Cara gives quite a lot of insight into what it is like to do a PhD and what support and guidance is available and worth seeking out.
You don’t have to be smart to do a PhD, just smart and persistent.
Bronwyn
We learn about how Cara became a nurse in the Emergency Department and how she then became supported to undertake her PhD. It is a great story that shows how novice nurses can develop skills in research and fit that in alongside their clinical work. We call this developing a clinical academic career and this happened for Cara at a time when it was not so recognised and there was minimal infrastructure to support this. However, one of the big messages from this section of the interview is that if you show you are curious and interested then more experienced staff will welcome you and support you.
Cara mentions ESRC which is the Economic and Social Research Council.
Selected references
Sausman, J, Arif, A, Young, A, MacArtney, J, Bailey, C, Rajani, J & Burt, R (2023) ‘Healthcare professionals’ perspectives of the management of people with palliative care needs in the emergency department of a UK hospital’, BMC Palliative Care, vol. 22, no. 1, 129. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-023-01248-8
Bailey, C (2012) Nursing the dying in the emergency department: the importance of therapeutic intimacy. in LL Steffen & N Hinerman (eds), New perspectives on the end of life: essays on care and the intimacy of dying. Probing the Boundaries, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford.
Bailey C, Murphy R, Porock D. (2011) Trajectories of end-of-life care in the emergency department. Ann Emerg Med. 57(4):362-9. doi: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2010.10.010. Epub 2010 Dec 4. PMID: 21131103.
Adventures in Research 