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Title: Ms. Job Title: Egenis Research Student Tel: 01392 269140 Fax: 01392 262676 Email: mp320@exeter.ac.uk Building: Byrne House Room Number: FF10
Before starting my PhD, I was a research fellow at the Health Sciences Research Institute of Warwick Medical School, the University of Warwick (I continue to be an associate fellow with the University). I was involved primarily in methodological research concerning a new approach to clinical practice - values-based practice, and in applied primary care research.
My work on the 'values project' involved developing search strategies for identifying publications on health-related values in electronic databases (‘values’ was understood very broadly, to include issues such as patients’ and other stakeholders’ values, perceptions, preferences, beliefs, experiences, satisfaction, quality of life, etc.). I also worked in palliative care research, on the evaluation of the Gold Standards Framework (GSF) rollout in England and Northern Ireland, in over 1300 general practices. This included an audit study of the level of change achieved by practices that implemented the GSF; GPs’ and nurses’ perceptions of the preferences for place of death of their patients and their experiences of finding out about them; and the facilitator role in implementing the Framework. I also worked on a qualitative study about the emerging role of health care assistants in general practice and an international health policy study on the philosophy and changes in the organisation of general practice across Europe (Bulgaria case study).
My background is in Psychology (BA in Psychology; MA in Clinical and Counselling Psychology; MA in Work and Organisational Psychology – Sofia University “Sv. Kliment Ohridski” – Sofia, Bulgaria; 1996-2001) and in Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health (The University of Warwick, 2003). I also have a minor in English Language and Literature (Sofia University, 2001).
I am in my first year as a PhD student. My interests are in the synthesis of health-related psychological research, in particular psychological research on physical health.
Evidence synthesis has become established within the evidence-based medicine framework as denoting the processes and products of systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials. This means that by far the greater part of psychological research, which uses different methodologies, is unlikely to be brought together to inform clinical practice, health policy and individual efforts at improving health and well-being.
Recently, a number of new methods have been developed for the synthesis of qualitative, and qualitative and quantitative, social sciences research on health. However, these are still relatively new and non-transparent in their assumptions and procedures for transforming findings from primary studies into a higher-order synthesis. Moreover, they remain strictly within the social sciences domain. I am interested in the synthesis of ‘typical’ health psychology knowledge but also knowledge from boundary areas, such as psychoneuroimmunology and behavioural genetics.
My project takes a philosophy of science perspective towards the processes of transformation which evidence from primary studies undergoes in order to be incorporated into a synthesis study. I am particularly interested in what supplementary information is needed in order to de-contextualise and re-contextualise evidence in a more robust manner; what types of evidence are comparatively easier, more difficult or impossible to transform and re-locate; and how evidence in health research is to be perceived if it is indeed freer to move across theories, contexts and aims than may appear at first sight.
Petrova M, Vail L, Bosley S, Dale J. ‘Benefits and challenges of employing health care assistants in general practice: A qualitative study of GPs’ and practice nurses’ perspectives’. Family Practice, 2010; 27(3): 303-311. doi:10.1093/fampra/cmq011
Petrova M, Dale J, Munday D, Koistinen J, Agarwal S and Lall R. (2009) ‘The role and impact of facilitators in primary care: findings from the implementation of the Gold Standards Framework for palliative care’. Family Practice, 2010; 27 (1): 38-47. doi:10.1093/fampra/cmp066
Munday D, Petrova M, Dale J. ‘Exploring preferences for place of death with terminally ill patients: a qualitative study of the experiences of GPs and community nurses’. British Medical Journal, 2009, 339:b2391
Dale J, Petrova M, Munday D, Koistinen-Harris J, Lall R, Thomas K. 'A national facilitation project to improve primary palliative care: the impact of the Gold Standards Framework on process and self-ratings of quality'. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 2009; 18 (3): 174-180
Petrova M, Dale J, Fulford KWM. 'Values-based practice in primary care: easing the tensions between individual values, ethical principles and best evidence’. British Journal of General Practice, 2006; 56 (530): 703-709
In press
Vail L, Bosley S, Petrova M, Dale J. ‘Health care assistants in general practice: a qualitative study of their experiences'. Primary Health Care Research and Development, 2010
In progressPetrova M, Sutcliffe P, Dale J, Fulford KWM. ‘Validated keywords for search strategies and filters to retrieve publications on health-related values in MEDLINE: a word frequency analysis study of over a million-word textual corpus’ Petrova M, Sutcliffe P, Dale J, Fulford KWM. ‘Methodological issues in objective search filter development: experiences from a study on developing values search strategies’
Petrova M, Sutcliffe P, Dale J, Fulford KWM. VaST (Values Search Tools): A manual for searching electronic databases for publications on health-related values
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