Dr Suzanne Grant is a Lecturer in Medical Anthropology within the School of Medicine (Population Health Sciences) at the University of Dundee, UK.
Suzanne’s research is located at the interface between anthropology, medicine and healthcare safety and quality. The overarching aim of her work is to improve understandings of safety, risk, wellbeing and dignity within and across healthcare organisational contexts through research that is both methodologically innovative and theoretically engaged. Drawing on insights from social and medical anthropology, her research adopts a novel approach to understanding and improving healthcare safety and quality through the application of innovative ethnographic and video reflexive ethnographic (VRE) methods. Her research focusses on the co-creation of safety, wellbeing and dignity by professionals, patients and their families across different healthcare contexts, and the development of ethnography and VRE as research and improvement methodologies.
Suzanne’s current research is funded by Tenovus Scotland (2017-18) and examines how VRE can best be used to understand and improve the safety of inter-professional teamwork in the UK secondary care. This work examines the application of VRE as both a research and improvement methodology amongst professionals, frail older people and their families, and the feasibility and implementation of VRE in the UK healthcare context. Her previous research was funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) Population Health Scientist Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-13) and focussed on the interrelationship between quality and safety in high-volume organisational routines (e.g. repeat prescribing, laboratory test ordering, document handling) within UK general practice. In particular, this research examined the relationship between formal and informal dimensions of safety, the spatial and temporal dimensions of safety and wellbeing, and the innovative methodological application of long-term and focussed ethnographic methods in healthcare organisational settings.
Suzanne studied Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews (MA (First Class Honours) (1999); PhD (2006)), and Public Health Research at the University of Edinburgh (MSc 2009-10). Her doctorate was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Studentship and an Emslie Horniman/Sutasoma Trust Award from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Based on ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Nivaclé indigenous people of the Paraguayan Chaco region of lowland South America from 2001-03, her PhD examined the impact of Mennonite settler colonisation on Nivaclé wellbeing. She has subsequently held research posts at the Universities of Dundee and Glasgow on the impact of financial incentives on UK general practice organisation and culture, before being appointed as Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at the University of Dundee in 2013.
Suzanne co-convenes the British Sociological Association (BSA) Medical Sociology Scottish Regional Group and took part in the Scottish Crucible 2014, a personal leadership and development programme for early career academics in Scotland across all disciplines.
Suzanne is currently principal investigator on the following research projects:
Grant S, Guthrie B, Mesman J. “Improving the safety of inter-professional collaboration in an Acute Medical Unit: an examination of the feasibility and implementation of video reflexive ethnography (VRE) in UK healthcare” (Tenovus Scotland Major Research Grant)
Grant S “Ethnographic evaluation of the Medicines Management Local Enhanced Service (MMLES) for improving the quality and safety of general practice repeat prescribing routines in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde” (NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde)
More info: http://medicine.dundee.ac.uk/staff-member/dr-suzanne-m-grant
videoreflexiveethnography.com 