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Dr Sara Donetto

Dr Sara Donetto (PhD)

Lecturer in Medical Education
E: S.Donetto@bsms.ac.uk
Location: Watson Building, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9PH

Areas of expertise: Social science & healthcare

Research areas: medical and health professional education, co-design, relationship- and person-centred care, patient and staff experiences of care.

Other faculty positions: Academic lead for international students

Biography

Sara is a social scientist with a background in medicine. They qualified as a physician in Italy and moved to the UK to work in the NHS. However, following completion of an MA in Medical Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, they decided to leave clinical practice to pursue further research in the social sciences applied to healthcare. Before joining BSMS, Sara was a senior lecturer at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative care at King’s College London, working primarily on the development of co-design approaches to healthcare improvement and the application of co-design principles to nursing education. Sara joined Brighton and Sussex Medical School in April 2023. They currently lead the Research methods and critical appraisal module across post-graduate courses at BSMS and are the academic lead for international students.

Research

Sara's research interests include pedagogical innovation in healthcare professional education; critical understandings of person- and relationship-centred care; patient and staff experiences of care; issues of epistemic and social justice in healthcare; collaborative approaches to the design and delivery of healthcare professional education and practice. Sara is currently co-investigator on a study for the co-design and testing of a digital intervention to support the mental wellbeing of young people in Colombia led by colleagues at King’s College London.

Sara has experience of doctoral supervision and is happy to supervise PhD projects on a variety of topics including, but not limited to, healthcare professional education, collaborative healthcare practices, health inequalities, and arts-based practices in healthcare.

BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR PANEL

Teaching

Sara has experience teaching on a range of subjects including qualitative research methodologies and methods, co-design and co-production, and the sociology of health and healthcare. They supervise MSc and MRes dissertations based on qualitative empirical projects and/or bibliographic work.

Selected publications

Desai, A., Zoccatelli, G., Donetto, S., Robert, G., Allen, D., Rafferty, A. M., & Brearley, S. (2023). The qualities of data: how nurses and their managers act on patient feedback in an English hospital. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 12(2), 194-208

Robert, G., Locock, L., Williams, O., Cornwell, J., Donetto, S., & Goodrich, J. (2022). Co-producing and co-designing. In Dixon-Woods, M., Brown, K, Marjanovic, s., Ling, T., Perry, E. & G.Martin (Eds.) Cambridge Elements: Elements of improving quality and safety in healthcare. Cambridge, THIS Institute. DOI: 10.1017/9781009237024. Available here >

Tuudah, E., Foye, U., Donetto, S., & Simpson, A. (2022). Non-Pharmacological Integrated Interventions for Adults Targeting Type 2 Diabetes and Mental Health Comorbidity: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review. International Journal of Integrated Care, 22, 27. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5960

Messina, R., Berry, E., Golinelli, D., Donetto, S., Reno, C., Moscatiello, S., Laffi, G. & Sturt, J. (2022). Tackling diabetes as a team: co-designing healthcare interventions to engage couples living with type 1 diabetes. Acta Diabetol, 59, pp.1053–1061.

Hanna, E., & Donetto, S. (2021). The pregnancy experiences of amputee women: a qualitative exploration of online posts. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology,doi: doi.org/10.1080/02646838.2021.2004301.

Donetto, S., Jones, F., Clarke, D. J., Cloud, G. C., Gombert-Waldron, K., Ruth, H., ... & Robert, G. (2021). Exploring liminality in the co-design of rehabilitation environments: The case of one acute stroke unit. Health & place, 72, doi: doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102695

Donetto S, Desai A, Zoccatelli G, Allen D, Brearley S, Rafferty AM, & Robert G. (2021). Patient experience data as enacted: Sociomaterial perspectives and ‘singular‐multiples’ in health care quality improvement research. Sociology of Health & Illness https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13276.

Robert G, Donetto S and Williams O. (2020) ‘Co-designing healthcare services with patients’. In: T Bovaird and E Loeffler (eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Co-production of Public Services. London; Palgrave Macmillan

Donetto S, Desai A, Zoccatelli G, Robert G, Allen D, Brearley S, Rafferty AM. (2019). Organisational strategies and practices to improve care using patient experience data in acute NHS hospital trusts: an ethnographic study. Health Services and Delivery Research, Vol. 7, No. 34. Available here >

Donetto, S., Penfold, C., Anderson, J., Robert, G., Maben, J. (2017). Nursing work and sensory experiences of hospital design: A before and after qualitative study following a move to all-single room inpatient accommodation. Health and Place, 46, 121-129