Lucy Bray

Reader in Children, Young People & Families, Edge Hill University

Lucy is a children’s nurse and academic with over 20 years of experience of working with children, young people and families, both clinically and as a researcher within a range of health care settings. She works part of her time as a Reader in Children and Young People within the Children’s Nursing Research Unit at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. Lucy is passionate about improving the health of children and young people and most of her work focusses around using innovative methods to facilitate the involvement of children and young people in research and their health care.

Her research interests and PhD supervision focus on:-

Children and young people with long-term conditions – Lucy has extensive experience of working collaboratively with children and young people with long-term conditions and their families to understand what is important to them in managing their everyday lives.

Children and young peoples’ engagement in health care services and health interactions – Lucy’s work has focussed on the education, information needs and preparation of children, young people and their parents for surgery, procedures and interventions. Her work explores how children and young people can be provided with information in a meaningful and timely way and how this influences their interactions with health professionals. This work has an increasing focus on the holding of children for clinical procedures and the interactions and actions which influence these episodes.

The majority of Lucy’s research is based on qualitative research approaches and uses innovative methods which aim to facilitate the involvement of children and young people including photo-elicitation and arts based approaches. Lucy is the Post-graduate Research Student Tutor for the Faculty of Health and Social Care and thoroughly enjoys supervising and supporting PhD students through their PhD journey.

Lucy has published over 40 peer reviewed journal articles and has been shortlisted for national and local nursing research awards. Lucy is a member of the national RCN Research in Child Health Core group.