In conversation with ... Susan Guthrie

In conversation with ... Susan Guthrie, Advanced Pratitioner, Speech and Langauage Therapy and CArDINAL Clinical Academic Research Fellow

In this edition of Innovation I interview Susan Guthrie. She tells me about her role in the Trust including what inspires her to have research as part of her role.

Can you tell me a bit about your role in the Trust and what does a typical day look like?

OK, so my role is split in half. So for two days a week I’m a clinical expert speech and language therapist and then the other two days the week are dedicated to my PhD study. This is a fellowship that was funded through LYPFT and the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds and and they’ve guided me through a five-year, part time, PhD process looking at the needs of adults with mental illness and mealtime difficulties.

Can you tell me a bit more about the research element of your role?

The study started off as is usual, with a full literature review, looking at what’s already known about mealtimes for inpatient wards for psychiatric patients. There’s a lot of papers looking at the impact of medication on patients’ swallowing. There was a real need for personal perspectives, and the literature review suggested that hadn’t already been covered. My study has been to interview patients, staff and speech and language therapists all working on inpatient wards with working age adults with mental illness. I’m looking into what happens at meal times, what difficulties are understood, what insights staff and patients have into this, and then what support there is.

What got you interested in research and how did you get into your current role?

It was a long time coming. I think. Looking back, it’s taken probably the best part of 10 years. I was a clinician working with adults with families and adults with mental health for 20 years or more in a site where we have people with very complex needs. I just kept coming across the fact that as an expert clinician what I was advising didn’t meet with what the patients were wanting, didn’t meet what was feasible for staff and there was this disconnect. I just felt I needed to understand more. I did a masters in 2014 and that gave me a of taster of research and a starting point. I also learnt about how to write for publication.

The reason for my research has always been to inform clinical practice and I’ve been open to all sorts of ways of sharing my findings and sharing my research with professionals and with patient groups, as well as with submitting to peer review journals. I think it’s really important that the findings are embedded back into clinical practice. That’s why I do it. It’s not some ivory tower exercise that means I’m set apart doing some sort of intellectual exercise. This is about making sure we’re informing practice.

You are also an advisor for the Royal College. So what does that involve? And how did having the research element of your role support that?

I’d already done some work on safeguarding with them. I had to send in details of my research and that was basically evidencing the fact that I had some experience in this area. I was asked to mentor some speech language therapists who are considering expanding their interest in research. It’s fairly flexible, but if there’s someone who approaches our college and wanting more information about mental health and a speech therapist role, I’m obviously a point of contact with clinical experience.

How does research element of your role connect with your front facing clinical aspect?

It’s absolutely key. It’s about how we practice, why we do it and whether there’s a better way. Looking at the mealtime experience is absolutely key before we give advice on managing a mealtime, we need to understand what it means to the patient, staff and the other people around the patient. Without the research to explore the issues and the influencing factors my practice wouldn’t be informed enough – it needs to have that understanding and that evidence base behind it.

Susan, do you want to tell me what do you think is next for you?

Longer term, I think there’s going to be a need for further research in this area. We need to see how we can improve mealtimes, how we can integrate mealtimes into recovery. It shouldn’t just be a “task to get through” at mealtimes, we can offer so much more.

If you are interested in finding out about different career pathways in research, please contact lypft.research@nhs.net

Page last updated: 20th May 2025 4:16pm