Dr WENDY LOWE

Biography

Wendy Lowe PhD graduated from The Royal London Hospital/University of East London as a physiotherapist in 1987. After working in the NHS in the UK as a general and ITU physiotherapist, she travelled to Israel – West Bank to work on a Save the Children Fund and University of Bethlehem joint venture to increase the number of trained BSc Palestinian physiotherapists.

From there, Wendy worked in Australia in Paediatric physiotherapy and completed a Post Grad Diploma in Ergonomics as the start of a lifelong interest in the link between learning and health. She conducted MSc quantitative research on a Biomechanical Analysis of Stance Posture of children with Cerebral Palsy.

Qualitative educational research followed on patient education and staff training in Manual Handling using Action Research in the Acute Care Setting, development of WISE teams (Workplace Investigation & Safety Evaluation), training for therapy assistants through a collaborative model of workforce development, and public health physical activity promotion in rural and remote Western Australia.

Her PhD research explored how health professionals are educated and some of the consequences of that with a particular focus on the social determinants of health. Post-doctoral research involved exploring both patients’ and health professionals’ experiences, knowledge and understanding of health literacy as a concept to improve health outcomes from those who tend to be marginalised within healthcare.

Her academic expertise is on a sociological analysis of the interplay between the individual and social institutions such as education and health. This enables her to pay particular attention to the intersection of medical students and medical schools through the means of student support. Medical Education has been a passion for a number of years now.

External Memberships

MCSP

SFHEA

Membership ASME

Research Overview

Research Interests:

Clinical

Patient education, Health Literacy in MSK conditions, Long Term Conditions, Self-management, Patient and Public Involvement in research, the body in medicine, early prevention of Long Term Conditions through addressing trauma, the use of creative arts as an alternative to the focus on written & verbal clinical patient education.

Education

Medical Dental & Physician Associate Students’ perspectives on consistency of contact with and support by their Regents

Medical students’ preparedness for third year clerkship activities and the socio-cultural learning environment

Widening participation and social capital in medical schools

Supervision of clinical teaching fellow educational projects

Medical Students’ Experiences with Complex Patients

The use of an e-learning tool for teaching Human Sciences Public Health

Supervision of medical students in iBSc Medical Education and SSC’s

• Researching alcohol as a mediator of medical student culture through the lens of social capital
• How can we use distance learning to teach medicine in Syria?
• Medical students’ attitudes towards a career in surgery
• The body in medical education
• Medical student perception of their teaching and learning about suffering

Health professional education – professional identity, professionalism, systems versus individual, gap between rhetoric and reality, self-management of professional self within the healthcare system. Exploration of how to manage the disturbance that social determinants bring to technically oriented training.

Current Research

Medical Dental & Physician Associate Students’ perspectives on consistency of contact with and support by their Regents

Regent's survey in the SMMSN University of Aberdeen conducted in August - September 2021