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Wolfson Institute of Population Health

Dr Stephen Hibbs

Stephen

Email: s.p.hibbs@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

I have been training as a haematology registrar in East London since 2017 and am taking up a HARP PhD fellowship from 2022 to explore hospital care of patients experiencing sickle cell crises.

 

Patients with sickle cell disease often experience stigma, disbelief and uncompassionate care in hospital. My PhD aims to understand what would constitute good care in hospital for patients experiencing sickle cell crises, and to identify the barriers to achieving this. I will be investigating the experience of patients from the decision of whether to come to hospital at all, their interactions once in hospital, and post-discharge care. I am also investigating the healthcare professional experience of caring for a patient in sickle cell crisis. I aim to understand how these experiences interact with the context of policies, protocols, and guidelines. My approach will be through a combination of ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and documentary analysis. The research will be co-produced with several people living with sickle cell disease, who will contribute to research design, data analysis, and the dissemination of findings

Research

Research Interests:

Research in haematology tends to focus on molecular mechanisms of disease or clinical studies with quantitative outcomes; in contrast, my interests have been in how patients and caregivers make meaning out of illness and healthcare experiences. I am interested in how different perspectives can deepen our understanding of these experiences, and I have previously co-produced research, conference presentations, publications and teaching resources with patients.

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