Dr Alison Powell is a Research Associate working on projects aimed at improving quality and safety in maternity care.
Before coming into research Alison trained as a direct-entry midwife and also worked at the British Medical Association, supporting negotiations on pay and terms and conditions of service.
Alison has a degree in history from the University of Cambridge. She did her PhD in health services research at the University of St Andrews, exploring the organisational and professional challenges faced by acute pain services in improving postoperative pain management in NHS hospitals. Since then she has worked on qualitative and mixed methods research studies with the University of St Andrews and the University of Edinburgh, studying specific services like maternity care and respiratory services in primary care and broader questions like the working relationships between managers and medical managers, how health professionals engage with quality improvement and what research organisations do to encourage the use of research in practice settings.
Alison joined the University of Cambridge in 2019 to work on the SAFER study, exploring the perspectives of patients, clinicians and wider stakeholders around a trial of an innovative screening programme aimed at detecting atrial fibrillation (AF), a heart condition responsible for one in ten strokes.