Rate My Professor Jackie Waterfield

Professor Jackie Waterfield serves as Head of the Division of Dietetics, Nutrition and Biological Sciences, Physiotherapy, Podiatry and Radiography within the School of Health Sciences at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, a role she has occupied since 2017. Prior to this appointment, she enjoyed a distinguished career as a physiotherapist followed by a position as Senior Lecturer at Keele University, where she earned the National Teaching Fellowship in 2014 for her innovative approaches to healthcare education. Her principal academic interests lie in pedagogies supporting professional development, real-world learning, and the integration of theory and practice in healthcare training. To address the theory-practice gap, she has implemented methods such as simulated patients, videoed assessments, practice-based portfolios, and non-discipline-specific mentoring, creating authentic learning environments. Dr Waterfield teaches across postgraduate, undergraduate, foundation-year, and doctoral programmes, with a strong emphasis on tutoring and mentoring. She completed a Faculty Learning and Teaching Fellow secondment at Keele focused on portfolio development for higher education staff and led the creation of the university's first fully online e-module, sparking further e-learning initiatives funded by University Innovation Projects. In 2009, she received the Jo Campling Memorial Prize from the Academy of Social Sciences for her paper on lifelong learning and continuing professional development in their political and social contexts, themes central to her doctoral thesis. Externally, she engages with professional and regulatory bodies to advance competence standards and good practice in healthcare, and serves as an external examiner for taught programmes and research degrees at multiple universities.

Professor Waterfield's research specializations encompass qualitative methodologies in health sciences, including conceptualization of saturation, a priori sample size determination, ethical issues in focus groups, and physiotherapy research priorities. Notable publications include 'Saturation in qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and operationalization' (2018, co-authored, over 17,000 citations), 'Can sample size in qualitative research be determined a priori?' (2018), 'Focus group methodology: some ethical challenges' (2019), 'Cultural aspects of pain: A study of Indian Asian women in the UK' (2018), and contributions to the James Lind Alliance Physiotherapy Priority Setting Partnership (2020). Her work has profoundly impacted methodological rigor in qualitative health research, evidenced by high citation rates and widespread adoption. She is a member of the Centre for Health, Activity and Rehabilitation Research (CHEARR) at QMU and participates in committees such as the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Professional Committee.