Our People

Janet Anderson

Centre Director

Dr Janet Anderson is a human factors psychologist specialising in the quality and safety of healthcare. She is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (US) and the Institute of Ergonomics Human Factors (UK) where she is the leader of the Healthcare Special interest Group. Her research has focused on how to identify, understand and reduce risks in the complex adaptive system of a hospital. Current areas of research include interruptions and distractions, teamwork and non-technical skills including compassion, cultural and organisational aspects of quality and resilience. Her research has emphasised the challenges and limitations of traditional safety management practices such as incident reporting, process mapping and prospective hazard analysis. A resilience approach, based on insights from complexity science and systems theory, holds much promise.

She is currently a Reader in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London. Janet’s Website.

Dr Al Ross (MIEHF) is a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health. His 2nd book “Beyond Human Error” was one of the first to call into question the reductive, technical-rational approach to safety which we now refer to as “Safety I”. He is interested in many aspects of Human Factors applied to healthcare, especially with regards to patient safety and improvement. Al lectures in Behavioural Science at Glasgow Dental School and details of his publications can be found on his Home Page.

Peter Jaye

Clinical Lead

Dr Peter Jaye is a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and the Director of Simulation at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust. He is also the Simulation Lead for the King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre. He is on the executive board of the Association for simulated practice in Healthcare. He developed the new BMJ title “Simulation and Technology enhanced learning” and is the ASPiH executive member with responsibility for this. He is a founder member of Clinical human factors group. He is also a director of The Human factor partnership. He is project lead on a number of projects including an NIHR funded project looking at Simulation within Emergency preparedness and a GSTT Charity funded project exploring the use of the performing arts in Healthcare to develop care and compassion.

His research interests within simulation include debrief, faculty development, innovation and patient safety and quality improvement. His frustrations with the target culture of “Safety I” have led him to believe that the resilient approach to healthcare will lead to greater improvements in patient care. Dr. Jaye is the clinical lead at CARe and is keen to see resilience principles inform work at the front-line and in healthcare management.

Adrian Hopper

Consultant Physician

Dr Adrian Hopper is a Consultant Physician specializing in geriatric medicine at Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation Trust. Adrian feels that the effectiveness of the care of older persons will be the single most important determinant of the future effectiveness of the acute hospital service. As well as running one of the most highly ranked training departments in Geriatric Medicine he has designed and introduced medical (OPAL) and surgical (POPS) liaison services for older persons which have been both influenced or been directly copied by many trusts.

Adrian has driven standards and efficiency by focussing on quality patient-centred care, including setting up weekly multidisciplinary meetings for real-time audit and timely responses to quality issues.

Patricia Snell

Deputy Director of Quality Improvement

Patricia Snell was the Deputy Director of Quality Improvement & Patient Safety at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust. She has worked in the National Health Service in Ireland, England and Wales for over 30 years. She has been instrumental in establishing quality and safety structures in large acute and community hospital trusts and across primary and social care sectors.

Patricia has a passion for promoting the role of safety, supporting colleagues to achieve change and drive through demonstrable improvements in the delivery of care for patients. She has published and presented on a range of quality, safety and performance issues at a National and International level.

Jonathan Back

Safety Scientist

Dr Jonathan Back is a Safety Scientist. He focuses on understanding the fit between human abilities and the limitations of the machine, task and environment. Jonathan applies his knowledge of human factors to discover how people perform resiliently in safety-critical contexts.

Jonathan has developed an understanding of human error associated with the use of medical devices and medical documentation. He has successfully persuaded designers of prescription charts to improve chart usability by studying actual use. Jonathan’s research builds on: (1) aggregated knowledge of resilience across safety-critical domains; (2) identification of strategies that are developed to avoid error; (3) findings of experiments, which enable systematic patterns of human performance to be predicted.

Myanna Duncan

Chartered Occupational Psychologist

Dr Myanna Duncan is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist whose research interests lie in the areas of occupational psychology, health psychology and workplace interventions. Prior to joining King’s College London, Myanna worked at the NIHR Leicester-Loughborough Diet, Lifestyle and Physical Activity Biomedical Research Unit undertaking translational clinical research in priority areas of high disease burden and clinical need. She also worked on the New Dynamics of Ageing, Working Late programme at Loughborough University.

Myanna has worked as an independent consultant for a number of Occupational Psychology firms where she draws on her specialism in the field of selection and assessment. Allied to this, Myanna also has a keen interest in psychometrics and is a BPS accredited assessor for Certificates of Occupational Test Use (formerly Level A & B).

Tom Kirby

Patient Safety Manager

Tom Kirby is a Senior Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Manager at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. He has over ten years experience in the quality assurance field, working exclusively within the NHS, primarily within the acute sector.

Tom has a long-standing interest in running discrete quality improvement projects that demonstrate tangible benefits to patient care. He has a particular concern for training healthcare professionals on quality improvement and patient safety issues.

Matthew Alders

PH.D Research Student

Matthew Alders is a PhD research student at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery (FNFNM). Matthew’s research project with CARe is concerned with defining and measuring resilience in healthcare settings.

Before starting his postgraduate studies Matthew successfully completed a BSc in Adult Nursing at FNFNM. Since qualifying he has worked as a Staff Nurse on the Acute Assessment Unit at the Royal London Hospital. Matthew also has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Warwick.

Jennifer Jackson

Registered Nurse

Jennifer is a Registered Nurse, with a clinical practice background in critical care, and a research interest in nursing resilience in the context of an organization. As a master’s student at Athabasca University, Jennifer studied the process of resilience for critical care nurses. She is expanding this work at King’s College London, as an international post graduate researcher at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.

Jennifer is also a leader in nursing education and communications. She spearheaded the launch of several social media programs in Canada, including the Canadian Nurses Foundation’s Nursing Week campaigns. Jennifer connects technology and health care, improving nursing education and patient safety. Her passions include social justice, advocacy, resilience, and caring for the caregiver.