Timothy Bradshaw

Overview

My training and experience as an adult (physical) and mental health nurse in the NHS have been a key influence on my teaching and scholarly activity/research at the University of Manchester. Since 1997 I have made significant contributions to pre and post registration clinical education to equip nurses and other health/social care professionals to provide high quality holistic care for people with long term mental health problems.  Since promotion to Senior Lecturer in 2009 I have focused on enhancing the quality of pre-registration mental health nurse education, initailly in the role of BNurs Mental Health branch leader 2008-12 and more laterly as the inaugural cohort lead for the intake to the September 2011 intake to the new Bachelor of Nursing (BNurs) curriculum.

My teaching portfolio is a broad one spanning undergraduate, postgraduate taught and research programmes within the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work (SoNMSW).  I teach on three separate programmes (Bachelor of Nursing (BNurs, level 6), Continuing Professional Development (CPD, levels 6 & 7), Advanced Practice Interventions in Mental Health (AIPMH, level 7)) and supervise dissertation students on four others (BNurs, CPD, AIPMH, MRes). I also supervise two PhD students one in SoNMSW and the other in the School of Brain Behaviour and Mental Health. 

Although employed on a teaching focused contract I have always participated in research and I have a sustained record of publication with over 50 manuscripts in peer review and professional journals as well as service user and University publications many of which are teaching related. This includes a series of papers which documented the achievements of the COPE programme, three publications about a project we delivered in South Africa to train township volunteers about mental health care and an evaluation of a teaching innovation which included its impact on trainees knowledge, attitudes and skills and outcomes for patients that students worked with.   

My other key interests are in Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in education and research. During the past 15 years I have formed a close working relationship with members of the Hearing Voices Network (http://www.hearing-voices.org/) and Connect Support (http://www.connectsupport.org/ CS - Support organisation for carers of people with serious mental health problems). Together we have developed and published a model of co-education where members of the HVN and CS work alongside our teaching team to deliver workshops and masterclasses. These sessions have been consistently well evaluated with students making comments such as “I have never felt so compassionate for someone in my life as I did when I heard K’s story it has helped me to connect and empathise more genuinely with service users in practice”(UG student, 2014). We have also developed and published a method for assessing student’s clinical skills in psychological therapy  by them interviewing a member of HVN or CS whilst being videotaped. In order to accurately rate student’s skills we published a reliable and valid scale. Both the method of assessment and the rating scale have now been widely adopted by other HEI’s for use in both teaching and research. 

Internally I am chair person of the BMidwifery exam board and outside of the university since 2014 I have been an external examiner to Bachelor of Nursing (Mental Health) at the University of Cardiff.

Biography

I trained as a Registered General Nurse in 1983 then undertook post basic training in mental health nursing in 1987. I completed a Diploma in Psychosocial Interventions for Psychosis (Thorn); BSc (Hons) and MPhil all part time whilst working in community mental health services. In 1997 I started work as a Lecturer at the University of Manchester where I have contributed to teaching on the COPE psychosocial education programmes. Between 2000 - 2005 I was Programme Director to the COPE undergraduate programme. From 2008-2012 I was mental health branch leader to the pre registration Bachelor of Nursing Programme.

My research interests center on improving the physical health of people with a diagnosis of psychosis. I also have considerable experience of developing mental health training programmes for delivery in both developed and developing world settings. Since 1995 I have consistent track record of publication and have most recently written a book chapter for further education college teachers about how to recognise and respond to the development of psychosis in their students.