Dr Linda Milnes

Profile

Linda Milnes was appointed as Associate Professor of Children and Young People's Nursing in the School of Healthcare in 2015 and is a member of the Maternal, Family and Child Health Research group. Linda was an adult and children's nurse for 15 years before commencing her research career as a research nurse on a study to assess the effectiveness of nurse-led self-management education for children attending A&E with an exacerbation of asthma. This role led to one as a freelance research assistant, and subsequently as a research associate on an NHS Executive North-West funded project which included capacity building funding and supported her in obtaining an MPhil in Nursing before securing a lectureship at the University of Manchester. Linda's MPhil was a case study design exploring primary care based asthma management for children and young people.  Linda's PhD was then funded by an NIHR Doctoral Fellowship to develop a communication tool for young people to use prior to consulting about their asthma.

Responsibilities

• Unit Lead BNurs Child

Research interests

Children/young people with long-term conditions and their families:  Linda is an applied health researcher and this is her broad area of research interest. More specifically Linda's research has focused on patient and parent/carer experiences, self-care support and self-management interventions across conditions such as asthma, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, ADHD and young people’s participation in consultations, e.g. developing interventions to support participatory communication skills in consultations, developing evidence-based health information, partnerships in personalised action planning, social media and its role in self-care support, health behaviour change and the development of complex interventions to support communication between young people, parents/carers and health professionals.

Linda has used a range of research designs and methods including mixed methods, case study, qualitative methods, pilot and feasibility RCTs, nominal group activities, focus groups, ethnographical approaches and surveys. Linda’s PhD was funded by an NIHR doctoral fellowship and her research  led to invitations to consult on the development of interventions for children and young people in Chicago and Albany, USA and McGill University, Montreal.  Linda has extensive experience in supervising undergraduate and postgraduate taught and research students.  She is currently supervising four PhD students - three home and one international (Saudi Arabia). Three of these are studentship/fellowships  – primary supervisor for  a School of Healthcare studentship (Simon Stones), another a  NIHR/HEE Integrated Clinical Academic  Doctoral Fellow (Laurie Cave a paediatric dietician) and as co-supervisor for a Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research studentship out of a successful partnership with the centre secured in 2019. A second studentship out of this partnership will be advertised in 2020.  Linda was an NIHR HS&DR Associate Board member (2015-2018), is a reviewer for NIHR Funding streams and a range of journals. 

 Linda welcomes enquires regarding post-graduate study related to the themes above.

Qualifications

• MPhil Nursing
• PhD Nursing

Professional memberships

• Nursing and Midwifery Council

Student education

Linda's main teaching commitments are on the undergraduate children's nursing programme.  Linda leads a unit and contributes across others including supervision of dissertation students, she is a link lecturer for placement areas and a personal tutor to a group of childrens nursing students. Linda's teaching expertise is linked to her research - topics related to long-term condition experiences and management in children, young people and their families/carers.

While supervising both UG and PGR students Linda supports them to publish their dissertations – for UGs this is an abstract in a professional journal and for PGRs (MSC and PhD) in peer reviewed journals.

Research groups and institutes

• Maternal, child and family health

Current postgraduate researchers

• Nada Dahlawi
• Dr Simon R. Stones
• Laurie Cave
• Grace Lewis