Martyn Jones contributes to Nurse education by teaching into the pre and post-registration programmes, by supporting Masters and PhD thesis students to design, implement and complete their research.

Martyn Jones first came to the School of Nursing and Midwifery in 1990 and has developed his research leadership profile in the School. Professor Jones has an international reputation in the area of workforce research. His current research examines how changes in healthcare organisation and work environment influences healthcare staff well-being and care provision. He uses innovative e-technologies to gather real-time accounts of the healthcare environment tracking its effect to staff well-being and to care delivery. Future research will develop and evaluate interventions to improve practitioner perceptions of control and support.

My research activities are focused a single key theme, “Improving Well-being and Care Delivery” with 2 sub-themes, understanding the “determinants of staff well-being and clinical performance”, and understanding how best to “support patients to better manage their long term conditions”. My research directly examines the interaction of staff and patients in care delivery and explores the impact of potential discrepancies in patient and staff perception on care provision.

• Determinants of staff well-being and clinical performance

The need to understand what determines well-being in nurses (both student and qualified nursing staff), and influences subsequent clinical performance is now well established in the literature (McKee et al, 2009). The policy and practice agenda in this area is driven by continuing international concerns regarding patient safety. The influence of the work environment on staff well-being and performance is the subject of research across international healthcare organisations.

This strand of my research activity is carried out in collaboration with Professor Derek Johnston at the School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen. While this research initially focused on well-being in student nurses, it has now developed to understanding how such processes operate in qualified nurses within acute healthcare environments using real-time data collection. My research in this area now focuses exclusively on specific aspects of nurse well-being and practice that are related to patient safety outcomes.

My research with student nurses is internationally recognised and has had considerable impact, as evidenced by citation rates and web-based educational initiatives hosted by external Universities. The SNSI has been used in a range of international studies in US, Canada, Brazil, China, UK and across Europe, and I regularly receive requests for its use. The SNSI is being used in course evaluation and in the evaluation of programmes to improve student nurses well-being and performance. This research has also involved the development and evaluation of a stress management intervention for student nurses focused on a range of individual and organisational strategies as a method of stress management.

My research exploring the effect of the work environment in qualified nurse mood/well-being and clinical performance continues to have impact at a clinical practice level. Professor Johnston and I are extending this behavioural diary work (Johnston et al, 2006; Jones & Johnston 2012). This approach enables tracking the impact of the healthcare work environment to clinical practice using PDA-based behavioural diaries

In collaboration with Prof Derek Johnson (Aberdeen), Prof Ian Ricketts and Dr Kenny Morrision (Computing, Dundee), I contributed to the development of Pocket Interview software, which is available to the academic community. This software is currently being used in several studies across Europe, with applications in French and Spanish, and is currently being updated for use on an Android platform.

• Supporting patients to better manage their long-term conditions

Supporting patients to better manage their long-term conditions is key to many policy and service delivery innovations (Scottish Executive, 2008). This strand of my research focuses on gaining an understanding of how patient represent their long-term condition and evaluates nurse-led interventions to promote self-management. This strand of research is also increasingly making use of methodological innovation, i.e., using real-time data collection (see Ph.D. students and Postdoctoral fellow activities). This research has a national and international profile and has had an impact at theoretical, methodological and clinical levels, as evidenced below.

The majority of my Ph.D. students, are working in the area of self-management in long-term conditions. The focus of this research is in understanding how patients represent and self-manage their long-term condition, and in evaluating strategies to promote improved self-management. I collaborate with Dr Karen Smith (School of Nursing and Midwifery /NHS Tayside Acute Services Division) and Professor Frank Sullivan (Tayside Centre for General Practice). I am currently engaged in a CSO funded study to examine the predictors of non-attendance at cardiac rehabilitation using behavioural diaries to capture weekly reports of cardiac related beliefs, motivation and mood.