Rate My Professor Karen Spilsbury

Professor Karen Spilsbury is Professor of Nursing in the School of Healthcare at the University of Leeds, having joined the institution in March 2015 as Chair in Nursing. A registered nurse, she holds a PhD in Nursing, BA (Hons) Nursing, Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, and Leadership in Action qualification. Prior to Leeds, she was awarded a personal Chair at the University of York in 2012, and she is an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia and Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the health and care workforce, particularly in care homes for older people, quality of care, and the impact of workforce composition, organisation, and management on care outcomes, employing mixed methods approaches.

As Academic Director of Nurturing Innovation in Care Home Excellence in Leeds (NICHE-Leeds), she leads interdisciplinary collaborations between care providers, local authorities, and universities including Leeds Beckett and Maastricht to enhance care home quality sustainably. Spilsbury has been principal investigator or lead on projects securing £19.6 million in funding from competitive sources like NIHR for 30 studies, including investigations into care home staffing and quality, values-based recruitment, and care home responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is an NIHR Senior Investigator from 2023 to 2027 and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her contributions to the field include editorial roles as Associate Editor of the International Journal of Nursing Studies from 2010 to 2018, membership on NIHR commissioning boards, HEFCE’s REF2021 Sub-panel 3 for Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy, and current service on the NIHR PRP Commissioning Committee. Through partnerships with policymakers such as DHSC, NHS England, Skills for Care, and others, her work influences health and social care policy and practice. Her research programme is recognised as world-leading, featuring extensive international collaborations such as We-Thrive for common datasets in long-term care and the Living Lab in Ageing and Long-Term Care with Maastricht University.