Julie Gregory

Overview

I am a Nurse Lecturer at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work as a  Nurse Lecturer.

My role as a nurse lecturer combines both teaching and research. I am currently involved in the undergraduate BNurse course and a member of the clinical skills training team. I am the cohort lead for the BNurse 2015 group.

In addition, I am the unit lead for the pain management module alongside Cliff Richardson.

Biography

I have over 30 years clinical experience, initially as a trauma and orthopaedic nurse, more recently as a clinical nurse specialist in acute pain management. As a CNS I introduced a number of developments to improve the assessment and management of pain for patients. These include single nurse administration of oral morphine and Entonox into community settings.

My PhD study explored the recognition, assessment and management of pain on an acute medical unit in a District General Hospital. Usung an Action Research approach and working collaboratively with staff on the unit we increased the documented assessment of pain and refferals made to the pain teams for advice and help to manage patients pain.

I have an interest in the assessment of pain for older people and in particular patients with cognitive impairment, including people living with dementia.Completing a practice devlopment project funded by the Foundation of Nursing Studies identifying a behavioural pain assessment  tool suitable for use in acute care.

A pain assessment tool was developed as a result of this project which combined elements of established pain assessment tools and has an additional section that includes information from family members or close carers who know the individual well. This was called the Bolton Pain Assessment Tool (BPAT) and it has been tested in a number of Acute hospitals in the North West of England and the UK. The evaluations from a number of clinical teams indicate that the content of the tool is valid and that it is clinically feasible. the responses suggest that patient''s pain is identified and as a result interventions to help manage the pain have been used. It has been introduced accross a number of acute hospital trusts. Further and testing of the BPAT is ongoing.

I have presented posters, at concurrent sessions and at a number of National and International Conferences and published papers relating to pain assessment and management and developments in the management of pain.