Alison Pilnick

I returned to academic study after initially qualifying and working as a pharmacist, and my healthcare background continues to inform my research interests. I research interaction between health and social care professionals and their clients in a wide range of settings, with the aim of producing research findings grounded in high quality social science that have real practical impact on the design and delivery of healthcare.
I'm interested in communication problems wherever they occur in healthcare: how do we give advice more effectively? How do we explain and discuss risk? How can we communicate better where we don't share a first language? How can we communicate better with people whose ability to communicate is in some way affected by illness, for example dementia? Increasingly I'm also interested in how interaction is technologically mediated. How do phone consultations with GPs differ from face-to-face ones? And Training using simulated or virtual patients, increasingly powered by AI, is increasingly prevalent in healthcare, and there's rightly a focus on the clinical authenticity of these simulations, but what about interactional authenticity?
My work has been funded by bodies including ESRC, NIHR, the British Academy, the General Research Fund of Hong Kong and the Swiss National Science Foundation. It has been used to inform practice and policy both nationally and internationally.