Professor Kathleen Galvin - ethics of care

As a novice nurse, Kathleen Galvin observed that knowing what to do in complex practice situations, when supporting people going through bodily challenges and life changing events, came from somewhere deeper than just technical knowledge. Kate’s passion about nursing care and her intrigue about this deeper resource set her on a path to investigate human experiences and their relevance for leading caring practices. This brought her to qualitative research and particularly to phenomenology as a way of going back to fundamental matters in human life, scientifically delineating their essence and describing their texture. For instance: ‘dignity’, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘suffering’ are real things experienced by people, they are not just empty labels or intellectual concepts. Such key aspects of living are important phenomena for nurses to be in touch with and to understand deeply because they can provide practical directions for care.

Professor Kathleen Galvin

Kathleen has been a nurse for over 30 years, she graduated from the University of Ulster and worked in acute care and care of older people, before taking up academic positions at University of Brighton, University of Hull and Bournemouth University. She undertook her PhD part-time at the University of Manchester while working as a clinical nurse - it was one of the first UK studies that examined the impact of nurse-led interventions as part of health promotion work in acute hospitals. This set her on a path of exploring patient experience which has culminated in research partnerships with internationally based colleagues in Canada, Australia and Scandinavia, including two International Visiting Professor Appointments: Guest Professor, Department of Caring Science, Boras University, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor, School of Nursing, University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Canada. She was inducted as an International Leader in Nursing 2003, by Zeta Omega Chapter, Honor Society of Nursing (Sigma) New York.

Inspiring others

Her research has contributed to theory for nursing practice and encompasses projects that move through the chain of theory generation, to empirical work, through to practice application and evaluation. She is guided by questions that include but are not limited to, what we mean exactly by dignity, what is the human experience of dignity? What do we mean by wellbeing and what do we understand about human experience when wellbeing is absent? These questions point to complicated concepts that are often ‘slippery’ and very difficult to define. Using this focus she has been developing new theory and evidence, based in phenomenological study, for use in nursing practice.

More recently, her theoretical work is contributing to a new and emergent field ‘ethics of care’. She collaborates with the Centre for Values-based Practice at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford and has built partnerships culminating in successful international research collaboration, including founding the European Academy of Caring Science (a Scandinavian influenced field).

She has led projects in practice that examine applications and value of theory for improving care (for example funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing: The Development of a Transferable Leadership Strategy for promoting Dignity in Care.