First SURE PhD graduate at the IoP
24 August 2010
She’s still not used to people calling her ‘Dr’ but Angela Sweeney is celebrating; she’s the first service user researcher to gain a PhD in the prestigious Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) unit at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King’s College London.
Angela came to the IoP after completing an undergraduate degree in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She was employed as a service user researcher, she said: 'Not many people know that the IoP isn’t just about medical psychiatry, but is also engaging in research from a lot of different perspectives. The Health Service and Population Research (HSPR) department is looking at different ways service users can engage in research – as a research partner and as a consumer of research evidence. Having the opportunity to do my PhD at SURE enabled me to draw strength from peer support.'
Angela focussed her PhD on a tool to measure experiences and perceptions of continuity of care from service users’ perspectives, called CONTINU-UM. Continuity of care doesn’t have a single agreed definition, and before this research, little was known about how it is conceptualised by service users. Her study differed from the previously derived clinical academic viewpoint; the thesis provided crucial supplementary knowledge to what is already known from a provider perspective, enabling researchers to understand continuity of care from multiple standpoints.
Her supervisors, Dr Diana Rose and Professor Til Wykes strongly endorse her research and said: 'CONTINU-UM can be seen as the missing piece of the jigsaw in our understanding of continuity of care.'
Professor Wykes added: 'Angela is a shining example of SURE at its best and we hope that she won’t be the last.'
As a long-term member of the survivor movement and a survivor researcher, Angela views her PhD as an example of survivor research. The survivor movement has emerged as an important driver in supporting service users to get the help that they believe they need. Survivor researchers focus on ‘experiential knowledge’, which centralises service user experiences’ as important and valid, and argues that these experiences should be interpreted by service users themselves.
Continuity of care is very important for many service users since the move from psychiatric hospitals to care within the community can be quite drastic. This has, in the past, produced gaps in care which were problematic and sometimes led to very poor outcomes for service users.
Angela’s research highlighted that fear is the underlying issue for service users and she hopes that her research will, '…support service users to have more power and control when they engage with services.
'My hope for the future is that this model can be translated into practical improvements in how staff and service users can engage.'
SURE was the perfect backdrop for Angela to complete her PhD as it is recognised as the European hub for progressive research that tests the effectiveness of services and treatments from the perspective of people with mental health problems and their carers.
Dr Angela Sweeney has now co-edited a book with other senior service user researchers called 'This is Survivor Research'. She is currently a Participation Project Manager at the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) (www.scie.org.uk ).