Dr Nancy Preston

Lecturer

Research Interests

I co-led the methodology theme for the Cancer Experiences collaborative (CECo). One of the projects I am involved in is a review of recruitment strategies that health care professionals can use to improve recruitment into research studies (quantitative or qualitative). This is a multi-centre study involving researchers from the University of Manchester, University of Cambridge and Southampton University. I was involved major project to develop guidelines on conducting research in palliative care through a grant from the MRC.

Another area I am involved with is developing patient reported outcome measures (PROM). I am part of a collaboration trying to develop a PROM in gynaeoncology conducting a systematic review of tools that have been used. This group involves both clinicians and academics.

I have been developing a proposal to evaluate the usefulness and meaning to patients of blood transfusions at end of life. We have recently completed a systematic review on the use of blood at the end of life through the Cochrane Collaboration. I am involved in a number of other systematic review with the Cochrane Collaboration including the management of pleural effusions and different ways of delivering specialist palliative care.

I am involved in the local Specialist Palliative Care network. We are conducting a small study to find out views of clinicians about conducting research in hospices.

Finally I help facilitate the Lancaster University Research Partner forum. This is a user group who help develop research ideas and give feedback to researchers about their research proposals. We have carried out an evaluation of their role.