Barbara Farquharson

Barbara is a Registered General Nurse and Senior Research Fellow within the NMAHP Research Unit. Her research focusses on the psychological and behavioural aspects of cardiovascular care with the ultimate aim of improving outcomes for patients.

Barbara was awarded a British Heart Foundation NMAHP Career Development Fellowship in 2020. Her fellowship study is exploring the critical role of ambulance service call-takers in facilitating bystander CPR in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and exploring the potential of adding techniques from behavioural science to the protocols call-handlers follow in order to increase rates of initiation. She is also currently leading a project (The BICeP Study) funded by the Medical Research Council developing a text-messaging intervention to increase lay-people’s confidence and willingness to initiate CPR.

Barbara has worked in research since completing her PhD in 2007 and undertaken projects relating to patient delay with heart symptoms, stress in nurses and multiple systematic reviews. Prior to this Barbara worked clinically as a registered general nurse for over 13 years in a variety of clinical areas including CCU, as a BHF Community Cardiac Nurse and as a Team Leader at NHS 24.