Dr Rachael Pattinson

Biography

Education and qualifications

2015: MSc in Health Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

2013: BSc in Applied Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

2019: Motivational Interviewing with Stephen Rollnick (co-founder of Motivational Interviewing).

2019: Rasch analysis, Leeds University, UK.

Committees and reviewing

External committees

Member of the Welsh Senedd Cross Party Group on Skin

Peer reviewer

British Journal of Dermatology

Journal of the European Academy for Dermatology and Venereology

Psychology Research and Behavior Management

Psychology, Health and Medicine

Health Psychology Update

Quality of Life Research

Honours and awards

2019: First reserve, Cumberland Lodge Life beyond the PhD award

Professional memberships

British Psychological Society

UK Society for Behavioural Medicine

European Health Psychology Society Member

Academic positions

2018 – 2021: Doctoral Researcher, Cardiff University, UK.

2017 – 2018: Research Associate, Cardiff University, UK.

2014 – 2016: Research Assistant, University of Manchester, UK.

Speaking engagements

Oral presentations at international conferences:

“Development of the Patient-Reported Impact of Dermatological Disease (PRIDD) measure: a concept elicitation study”. European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology: 30^th EADV Congress, October 2021.

“Development of the Patient-reported Impact of Dermatological Diseases (PRIDD) measure: a concept elicitation study”. European Society for Dermatology and Psychiatry: 19^th Congress, June 2021.

“Improving patient engagement in dermatology research”. European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology: 29^th EADV Congress, October 2020.

“Patient-reported measures in dermatology: a systematic review”. European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology: 28^th EADV Congress, September 2019.

Publications

I have an established interest in quality of life and behaviour change for people with long-term conditions with a particular focus on the development of interventions to improve patient outcomes in the field of dermatology. I am a member of the School's Optimising wellbeing and the management of long term conditions research theme.

My specific expertise is in the assessment and management of the impact of dermatological conditions on patients’ lives, methodologies for the patient-centred development of outcome measures, behaviour change interventions for patients and communication skills training for clinicians.

As a health psychologist, I am trained to work across health conditions and focus on risk factors and behaviour change interventions. Over the last decade, I have worked across a number of therapeutic areas (e.g. dermatology, facial palsy, ophthalmology), populations (e.g. patients, clinicians) and research areas (e.g. burden of disease, COVID-19). I have developed expertise in local, national and global research projects; quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research; behaviour change interventions for both patients and clinicians; and service development in the context of long-term conditions, especially inflammatory skin disease. Common across my projects is theoretically informed research, a biopsychosocial approach to health and illness and multidisciplinary team science with a view to improving patient outcomes and experiences and service delivery.

My PhD focus was to develop and validate the new Patient -Reported Impact of Dermatological Diseases (PRIDD) measure, designed to comprehensively measure the impact of dermatological conditions on patients’ lives. I was supervised by Professor Chris Bundy and Dr Nick Courtier. My PhD formed part of the Global Research on the Impact of Dermatological Diseases (GRIDD) project which is the first global research project on disease burden in multiple skin conditions and the first completely patient-initiated and –drive research project in dermatology. The GRIDD project is funded by the International Alliance of Dermatology Patient Organisations (IADPO) and is a collaboration between patient organisations and researchers at Cardiff and Hamburg Universities. The GRIDD project aims to measure the global disease burden across a wide spectrum of dermatological diseases by collecting global impact data using PRIDD. The data will be used to provide previously unavailable key data for the global dermatology community to use to advocate to policy- and decision-makers to encourage improved care paradigms for those living with skin conditions. If you are interested in finding out more about the GRIDD project or you would like to take part, please follow this link: https://globalskin.org/research, or contact me at pattinsonr@cardiff.ac.uk.

I am passionate about public and patient involvement and multidisciplinary team science in my work. I actively pursue the real-world impact of my research through dissemination, public and patient involvement, training and clinical work. I sit on the Welsh Senedd Cross Party Group on Skin working directly with the government to highlight the causes, prevention and treatment of skin conditions and support available for the people living with these conditions. I provide expertise on communication skills to dermatology-specialist staff, as a PROM consultant for industry and behaviour change expert for undergraduate programmes for health professionals (e.g. Physiotherapy) at Cardiff University. This has allowed me to interact with front -line NHS staff, patients and industry who are interested in research of direct relevance to real -world problems.

I am currently involved in a number of externally funded active research projects:

1. The Patient-Reported Impact of Dermatological Diseases (PRIDD) measure: a global mixed methods measurement development and validation study (GRIDD project)
2. Developing a mobile health application for people with serious skin conditions: the SkinWise project
3. Measuring the impact of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic deployment response among Nursing staff in Wales: the ASSISTANCE study

Supervision

Past projects