Dr Cara Bailey PhD, RN, MN, PGCert(LTHE)

Dr Cara Bailey

School of Nursing
Lead for Postgraduate Studies and CPD

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 3657
Email
c.bailey.2@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Institute of Clinical Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Cara Bailey is Senior Lecturer and Lead for Postgraduate Studies and CPD in Nursing within the College of Medical and Dental Sciences. 

Cara is a qualified nurse with experience in both emergency care and hospice care settings. Her research maintains a broad interest in the care of people at the end of their lives beyond cancer in palliative and end of life studies and for those who work closely with the dying, the bereaved and the critically ill. Her current research focuses on EOL care in the Emergency Department, measuring the quality of EOL care in the community and hospital settings; educational support for nurses caring for the dying and managing emotional labour; and the economics of end of life care. For the latter, she is seconded to Health Economics (0.4FTE) to work on a large European Union funded project ‘EconEndLife’. Cara has published in Scientific Journals, book chapters and disseminated research at conferences and invited seminars at both national and international levels. Given the nature of her work on advanced care planning and the quality of end of life care, she contributes to both the local and national media.

Qualifications

  • PhD (University of Nottingham)
  • MN (University of Nottingham)
  • RGN (University of Nottingham)
  • PGCert(LTHE) (University of Birmingham)

Biography

Cara entered the nursing profession in 1999 and has a background in emergency care. She qualified with a Master’s Degree in Nursing in 2003 from The University of Nottingham, England and moved to Southampton to work in the Emergency Department. She returned to The University of Nottingham in 2005 and was awarded a PhD in 2009. The focus of her Doctorate was end of life care in the Emergency Department. She has since focused her post-doctoral work investigating end of life care with emergency settings in addition to other areas of end of life research.  

Care contributes to the development, delivery and evaluation of education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has developed a new MSc Advanced Clinical Practice and developed standalone CPD module aimed at nurses across a range of clinical settings.

Cara maintains her clinical practice working within the hospice and also maintains her clinical links with Emergency Department at QEUHBT.   

Teaching

  • Supportive Care for Adults (Module Lead – BNursing Programme)
  • MSc Advanced Clinical Practice (Module Lead - PGT)
  • Supportive and end of life (Module Lead - PGT)
  • Advanced Health Assessment and Clinical Decision Making (PGT)
  • Emergency Medical Assessment (PGT)
  • Independent Prescribing (CPD)

Postgraduate supervision

Cara has experience in supervising at postgraduate level at both Master’s and PhD level and has supported students conducting research projects through to successful completion. She is interested in supervising projects related to:

  • End of life care
  • Nurse-patient relationships
  • End of life care education
  • Measuring quality of supportive care
  • Models of Social care and end of life care

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Cara on the contact deatils above, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email: dr@contacts.bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)121 414 5005.

For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings.   

Research

Cara’s research focuses on the care of people at the end of their lives beyond cancer in palliative and end of life studies and for those who work closely with the dying, the bereaved and the critically ill. She currently work across four research areas:

  • end of life care in the Emergency Department
  • the quality of end of life care in the community and hospital settings
  • educational support for nurses caring for the dying and managing emotional labour
  • the economies of end of life care and measuring quality of end of life care

Spanning these topic areas is a further methodological interest of qualitative research, in particular the ethical and practical challenges of including patients near the end of life in qualitative research.

Other activities

  • Reviewer for Journal of Advanced Nursing
  • Reviewer for Journal of Emergency Nursing 
  • Works clinically as a nurse and registered with Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (July 2005 - Present)
  • Member/Researcher of End of life research group. The University of Birmingham (August 2009 - present).  
  • Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS) September 2009 - Present)
  • Peer Reviewer for Journal of Advanced Nursing (August 2011-Present)  
  • Steering Committee Member: Making sense of death and dying. Interdisplinary.net (November 2011-Present)
  • Breathe Easy User Involvement Group Facilitator (April 2012 - Present)
  • Care Collaborative (Previously MaCPacc Collaborative) (November 2012 - Present) 
  • EconEndLife Advisory Group member (April 2013 - Present)
  • Higher Education Academy Fellow (August 2013)  
  • The International Health Economics Association (IHEA) member (March 2014)

Publications

Bailey, C.J., Orlando, R., Kinghorn, P., Armour, K.,  Perry, R.,  Coast, J. (2014) Measuring the Quality of End of Life Care Using ICECAP-SCM: A Think Aloud Study. Palliative Medicine, 4(1):112.  

Bailey, C.J. (2014) The impact of an educational workshop on attitudes towards caring for patients at the end-of-life in critical care amongst undergraduate nursing students.  Journal of Clinical Nursing, 23(23-24): 3555–3563. 

Hewison, A., Lord, L., Bailey., C. (2014) It’s been quite a challenge: redesigning end of life care in acute hospitals. Supportive and Palliative Care, doi:10.1017/S1478951514000170.

Bailey, C. (2013) Nursing the dying in the Emergency Department; the importance of therapeutic intimacy. In: Hinerman, N., Steffan, L. New Perspectives on the End of Life: Essays on Care and the Intimacy of Dying. Interdisciplinary press, Oxford.

Efstathiou, N., Bailey, C. (2012) Promoting active learning using Audience Response System in large bioscience classes. Nurse Education Today, 32(1):91-5. 

Bailey, C.J., Porock, D., Murphy, R (2011) Dying cases in emergency places: Caring for the dying in Emergency Departments. Social Science and Medicine. 73(9): 1371-7. 

Bailey, C.J., Porock, D., Murphy, R (2011) Professional tears: managing emotional labour at the end-of-life in the Emergency Department. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 20(23-24): 3364–337. 

Bailey, C.J., Porock, D., Murphy, R.  (2011) Trajectories at the end of life in the Emergency Department. Annals of Emergency Medicine , 57(4): 362-369.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

End-of-life care, particularly improving care at the end-of-life in the Emergency Department; preparing nurses to manage the emotional aspects of caring for the dying