YSJ OT graduate Sarah Masefield
In the second of our series on Where are you now? Sarah Masefield tells us about her research career since training to be an OT at YSJ.
What is your connection with the Occupational Therapy Programme at York St John University (YSJ)?
I graduated from YSJ in 2011. From 2012-2016 I worked as the patient involvement and engagement officer for the European Lung Foundation. I have just started a fully funded PhD at the University of York, looking at routinely collected health data and mental health in mothers who have a child born with a disability.
Tell us about your current role.
For the last 5 years I worked for the European Lung Foundation based in Sheffield. I took the role on as a one-year maternity cover appointment and was then made permanent. It was an amazing job, where my role was to involve people with respiratory conditions in the scientific and education activities of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), and communicate the scientific and educational activities of the ERS to patients and the public. This meant travelling to conferences and meetings across Europe to talk to doctors about how they could better involve people living with the condition that they were, for example, writing new clinical practice guidelines on. This has developed into becoming a researcher in my own right, with a number of papers and abstracts to my name.
What was your favourite aspect of the OT Programme at YSJ?
I hugely enjoyed my time at YSJ, especially my third year international OT placement in Uganda.This video summarise my experiences during my international OT placement:
My dissertation module was another memorable aspect of the Programme. Having the opportunity to work on a primary research project of my own was where I discovered my passion for research which has informed my career pathway .
I am certain that OTs have the perfect transferable skills and experience for working in the ever growing area of patient and public involvement (PPI). If you are interested
in finding out more about this as an area of practice, take a look at the factsheet that my colleagues and I developed European Lung Foundation Patient and Public Involvement
Here are some more examples of my publications.
This article is about how patients can be involved in medical society activities: “Patients Included” in the European Respiratory Society International Congress
Here’s a paper on some of my research: Recommendations to improve smoking cessation outcomes from people with lung conditions who smoke