Dr Paulina Daw BSc, MSc, PhD

• PhD in Implementation Science, University of Birmingham, 2022
• MSc in Transcultural Mental Healthcare, Queen Mary University of London, 2018
• BSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Coventry University / The Sherwood Psychotherapy Institute, 2012
• Accredited Member, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
• Accredited Practitioner and Supervisor, IPT-UK

Paulina completed her PhD in Implementation Science at the University of Birmingham in 2022. Her doctoral research examined the implementation of the REACH-HF home-based cardiac rehabilitation programme across NHS services. Working with patients, carers and healthcare professionals, she used qualitative methods and routinely collected clinical audit data to examine how the programme was adapted and delivered in practice. This work informed the REACH-HF Service Delivery Guide, developed to support cardiac rehabilitation teams adopting the programme.

Paulina complements her academic implementation research with more than a decade of clinical and operational experience in NHS Talking Therapies services. Her NHS leadership experience includes clinical oversight, team management, supporting service quality and performance, delivering training, supervising therapists, responding to operational pressures, and promoting compassionate, evidence-informed service delivery. This dual perspective informs research that attends to workforce capacity, patient complexity, organisational context, and the practical demands of successful implementation. Her academic work is shaped by an understanding of how evidence, policy and service priorities interact in routine practice, and of the conditions that make new interventions feasible and sustainable.

Paulina welcomes enquiries from prospective MA, MSc and PhD researchers whose interests align with her work. She is particularly interested in projects examining how evidence-based interventions are adapted and embedded in routine care; how implementation varies across settings; and how services can support equitable and sustainable ways of working.

Paulina’s research applies implementation science and mixed methods to the development, optimisation and evaluation of complex interventions in healthcare systems. Her work is particularly concerned with implementation in routine practice, stakeholder co-production, service improvement and equity.

IMPROVE DKD: optimisation and implementation of digital support in primary care

Within the IMPROVE DKD programme, Paulina contributed to the optimisation and implementation of a multi-component digital intervention to improve the management of people with diabetes and chronic kidney disease in primary care. Working closely with the medical informatics team, she drew on qualitative feedback from patients, carers and NHS staff to refine the intervention and identify requirements for wider implementation.

PERFORM: personalised rehabilitation for people with multiple long-term conditions

Paulina contributed to the NIHR-funded PERFORM programme, which developed and evaluated a personalised exercise rehabilitation and self-management intervention for people with multiple long-term conditions. Her work included co-design and intervention development, healthcare professional training and process evaluation planning, undertaken in collaboration with patients, carers, clinicians, commissioners, policymakers and academic partners.

REACH-HF: implementation of home-based cardiac rehabilitation

Paulina’s doctoral research examined how REACH-HF, a home-based cardiac rehabilitation and self-management programme for people with heart failure, was implemented across NHS services. It explored provider- and system-level implementation leavers, local adaptations, variation in delivery and the relationship between trial evidence and routinely collected outcomes. The findings informed a Service Delivery Guide for cardiac rehabilitation teams.

Mental health services, implementation and service improvements

Paulina’s clinical and operational background in NHS mental health services informs her interest in how psychological interventions, service innovations and digital tools are implemented in routine care, and how staff, patients and organisations respond to change. Her clinical leadership experience strengthens her ability to conduct applied healthcare research that is sensitive to workforce pressures, patient complexity, service constraints and real-world implementation challenges.