About
Chiara is a lecturer within the Health Workforce & Systems theme in the School of Health Sciences, and deputy theme lead for the NIHR ARC Wessex Workforce and Health Systems theme. Chiara leads a research programme around health workforce wellbeing and performance, with a specific focus on shift patterns and workforce configuration. Chiara's expertise lies in analysing workforce routinely collected data from rostering systems. She is currently leading a project seeking to understand nurses' preferences and constraints around shift patterns in mental health and community hospitals. Her work is supported by NIHR and NIHR ARC Wessex grants. Recently, Chiara has been awarded an Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard award.
Research
Research interests
- Health workforce organisation
- Shift work
- Occupational health - burnout
- Occupational health - sickness absence
- Patient safety
Current research
- Nursing shift patterns in acute, community and mental health hospital wards: a feasibility study and survey. Collaboration with Solent NHS Trust and Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust. I am leading this study, which stems from research gaps identified through my doctoral research. Before this study, there had been little research exploring individual factors influencing shift work experiences among nurses, and research has been largely confined to acute hospitals. The aim of this research is to provide evidence to support decision making about deployment of nursing shift patterns on acute, mental health and community hospital wards in England. To do this we will understand how shift work may impact on the experience of work and productivity from the nurses’ perspective, including an assessment of preferences and constraints through a survey; determine the availability and quality of nurse and patient routinely collected data in mental health and community hospitals; if data are of good quality, we will measure associations between shift patterns, workforce characteristics and outcomes including nurses’ sickness.
- Consequences, costs and cost-effectiveness of different workforce configurations in English acute hospitals: a longitudinal retrospective study using routinely collected data. Collaboration with Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust. I am the Deputy PI on this project. This study seeks to understand how variation in the size and make-up of care teams on hospital wards in England influences patient outcomes and the costs of care. Developments in information technology now make it possible to link nurse staffing levels experienced by individual patients on every day of their stay, to the outcomes experienced by those patients. Our research group was the first to use these new sources of information to explore how the mix of staff in the nursing team affected outcomes and cost of care, but it was in one hospital only. This study will expand our work into three more NHS Trusts located in different geographic areas.
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Teaching
As part of the module I lead (NPCG6003), aiming to prepare Dual Field student nurses to transition to practice and registration as Registered Nurses, I teach how to develop and evaluate a teaching package. Specific teaching for this module includes:
- Learning theories in adults
- Developing learning outcomes
- Leading theory sessions
I lead sessions around research methods and evidence-based practice, specifically:
- Appraising evidence
- Seminar lead for BSc project
I deliver teaching around maintaining health and wellbeing as a nurse across a number of programmes within the school, focusing on:
- The work environment
- Compassionate teams
- Supernurse culture & burnout
I lead teaching around patient safety for post graduate students.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Chiara qualified as a Registered Nurse after completing her Bachelor Degree in Italy, at the Universita' degli Studi di Milano Bicocca in 2011. In 2013 she gained a Masters Degree in Nursing and Midwifery Sciences at the Universita' degli Studi di Milano Bicocca.
In 2018, she was awarded a PhD in Health Sciences at the University of Southampton, where she was then employed as a research fellow. Since 2020, Chiara has been a lecturer in nursing within the School of Health Sciences, where she splits her time between research and education.
Prizes
- IJNS Rosemary Crow Award (2016)
- Best abstract session presentation HSRUK 2018 (2018)