Qualitative SIG

Dr Matt Breckons

Role(s) within the University: Senior Research Associate, NIHR NENC ARC Fellow, Member of the Health Economics Research Group and Population Health Sciences Institute (PHSI). 

Background 

Matt has an undergraduate degree in health sciences and his PhD, based jointly at the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter, took a Soft Systems approach to exploring the role of cultural factors affecting the development of an evidence-based information service.

During and since his study he has worked in a variety of roles; on a large clinical trial of acupressure for chemotherapy related nausea and then as part of the Macmillan Survivorship Research Group at Southampton University. Matt moved to Newcastle in 2012 and worked on a study looking at care pathways in persistent orofacial pain. He has worked on several pieces of health economics work, including the application of qualitative methods in preference elicitation work.

Matt has used qualitative methods in a variety of settings including nested work within-trials or mixed-methods studies. He has been successful in several funding streams including NIHR Research for Patient Benefit, Health Service and Delivery Research, Health Technology Assessment and Global Health.

 Areas of interest: 

  • Applied research
  • Care Pathways
  • Use of emergency services
  • Persistent pain
  • Rapid design in health systems
  • Clinical decision making
  • Ageing in low and middle income counties
  • Health informatics
  • Taste loss
  • Communication at end of life
  • Public health and local authorities
  • Cancer
  • Rapid research and evaluation methods

Supervision and Teaching: 

Matt has contributed to qualitative research methods during his time at Newcastle and leads regular courses to postgraduate students on NVivo. In his ARC role he delivers practical qualitative methods training to healthcare professionals and is involved in developing and teaching ‘What is Research?’ sessions to professional and public involvement groups.

Matt currently has a number of PhD and Masters students working on diverse topic areas including health informatics, evidence-based practice and ageing in sub-Saharan Africa. Matt also supervises an ARC Practitioner Secondment project.

Looking to collaborate on:  

  • Service Evaluations using qualitative methods
  • Projects looking at culture and decision making in healthcare or methodology
  • Methodology focused work e.g. development of rapid methods
  • Care pathways research from patient and professional perspectives
  • Long-covid work

NU Profile page: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/people/profile/matthewbreckons.html