Driving forward mental health research

An Essex specialist in mental health nursing will be driving forward research and clinical academic careers at Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Professor Fiona Nolan from our School of Health and Social Care will be working with specialist mental health trust Tavistock and Portman from June in a new clinical nursing professor role. 

Professor Nolan will be helping the trust build its research programme, looking at ways the University and the trust can work together on research projects, and developing research funding bids. She will also look at ways to facilitate nurse’s engagement in research and guide the development of clinical academic career pathways in nursing. 

She is one of eight current Florence Nightingale Foundation chairs of nursing in the UK and the only one in mental health.

“I am looking forward to taking up this honorary appointment with the trust and to starting work with this impressive group of nurses,” said Professor Nolan. “The specialist clinical services will provide an excellent basis for their academic enquiry.

“We have a continual exchange of ideas between our School of Health and Social Care and the Tavistock and Portman trust and my role now is to build on that, to develop the trust’s staff and research capacity.”

Professor Nolan joined Essex as a professor of mental health nursing in 2017. Prior to that, she held joint clinical academic posts between University College London and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust for over 15 years.