Following a clinical background in adult nursing, I moved into higher education in the late 1980s, supporting students on both pre-and post-qualifying nursing programmes at a range of different academic levels. Over the last nine years this has been predominantly in the field of distance learning, firstly with the RCN Institute and now at The Open University. Here, I’m involved in leading the development and delivery of high quality, flexible, work-based learning solutions for the nursing and healthcare workforce. Central to this is a desire that, all education should make an impact on practice in some way. My education and research activity is predicated on this one, central aim. I am currently involved in a number of projects including developing a framework for maximising the impact of learning on practice, exploring the transition from student to staff nurse and investigating dimensions of practice support.
PhD, BSc (Hons), RGN
In the past, I have supported learning on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses including women's health, nursing theory, research and evidence based practice, gerontological nursing and the promotion of person-centred ways of working with older people.
In terms of learning and teaching processes, I am very interested in flexible and distance learning approaches, recognising the increasing need for nurses to be able to study more flexibly, when and where they can. As a national provider of supported and open distance learning, the OU is well positioned to respond to the education needs of nurses and other healthcare workers. Our current offer includes a part-time, pre-registration nursing programme, the only one of its kind using distance learning methods, and a post-qualifying education framework.
My research interests can be grouped around 2 overarching themes of life course transitions and education. My previous projects are listed below:
1995 Draper. £2,000 grant from a local NHS Trust to undertake a survey to explore maternity services users’ satisfaction with information received in the antenatal period. Lead applicant and sole researcher.
1996/7 Draper, Newburn, Dodds and Wang. £75,000 grant from the Department of Health as part of the Changing Childbirth Implementation Strategy. This was a collaborative project with the National Childbirth Trust designed to develop, implement and evaluate training for user representatives within the maternity services arena. Lead applicant and joint project manager.
2001 Draper and Watson. Unfunded evaluation of a local NHS cadet scheme. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods and explored former cadets’ experiences of a cadet scheme nine months into their pre-registration nurse education. Joint researcher and joint project manager.
2001/2 Draper, Jowett, Norman, Normand (with Watson and Wilson-Barnett). £107,753 grant from the Department of Health to undertake a national evaluation of NHS cadet schemes across England. Employing quantitative and qualitative methods, this was a collaborative project with King’s College London, the Universities of Hull and Luton, the RCNI, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Joint applicant and joint project manager.
2007/9 Draper, Clark and Sparrow. £200,000 from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as part of the Higher Education Innovation Fund 3 (HEIF3). The remit of the Impact on Practice (ImP) Project was to develop a framework to maximise the impact of continuing professional education on healthcare practice. Co-applicant and joint project manager.
2008/9 Draper, Sparrow and Gallagher. £16,000 from the OU Practice Based Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. This project explored student nurses' experiences of the transition from student to staff nurse. Lead applicant and principle investigator. Website link
In January 2009 Lin McDonagh, Donna Gallagher and I received funding from the OU Practice Based Learning Centre for Excellenve in Teaching and Learning to undertake a project to explore Programme Tutor's experiences of tutoring students on the OU pre-registration nursing programme. The project is at the data analysis stage and we will be reporting in February 2010. website link.
In August 2009 Liz Clark and I received further funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as part of the Higher Education Innovation Fund 4 (HEIF4) to undertake a second phase of the the ImP project (see above). This phase will involve working in collaboration with East of England Strategic Health Authority to empirically test the framework developed in the first phase of the project (2007/9).
Publications cut across a range of journals. Publications since 2000:
Draper, J. (2002) ‘It’s the first scientific evidence’: Men’s experience of pregnancy confirmation – some findings from a longitudinal ethnographic study of transition to fatherhood, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 39 (6), pp.563-70.
Draper, J. (2002) ‘It was a real good show’: the ultrasound scan, fathers and the power of visual knowledge, Sociology of Health and Illness, 24 (6), pp.771-95.
Draper, J. (2002) Learning by degrees: A flexible approach to getting a degree in gerontological nursing, Nursing Older People, 14 (2), pp.30-1.
Wright, J. and Draper, J. (2002) Learning at work: Work-based learning and expert gerontological practice, Nursing Older People, 14 (4), pp.34-5.
Draper, J. and Watson, R. (2002) Cadets and nursing students: same destination – different route, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 40 (4), pp.449-56.
Draper, J. (2003) Men’s passage to fatherhood: an analysis of the contemporary relevance of transition theory, Nursing Inquiry, 10 (1), pp.66-78.
Draper, J. (2003) Blurring, moving and broken boundaries: men’s encounters with the pregnant body, Sociology of Health and Illness, 25 (7), pp.743-67.
Draper, J. and Draper, P. (2003) Response to Watson’s editorial ‘Scientific methods are the only credible way forward for nursing research’ [Journal of Advanced Nursing, 43 (3) pp.217-18], Journal of Advanced Nursing, 44 (5), pp.546-47.
Norman, I., Watson, R., Draper, J., Jowett, S., Normand, C. and Wilson-Barnett, J. (2003) Networth, Health Services Journal, 113 (5882), pp.34-5.
Draper, J. (2004) The evidence base for gerontological nursing practice (Part 1): What do we mean by evidence? Nursing Older People, 16 (6), pp.28-33.
Draper, J. (2004) The evidence base for gerontological nursing practice (Part 2): Making sense of the evidence, Nursing Older People, 17 (7), pp.28-33.
Draper, J., Halliday, D., Jowett, S., Norman, I., Watson, R., Wilson-Barnett, J., Normand, C. and O’Brien, K. (2004) NHS cadet schemes: student’s experience, commitment, job satisfaction and job stress, Nurse Education Today, 24 (3), pp.219-28.
Watson, R., Norman, I. J., Draper, J., Halliday, D., Jowett, S., Wilson-Barnett, J. and Normand, C. (2005) NHS Cadet Schemes: do they widen access to the healthcare workforce?, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 49 (3), pp.276-82.
Draper, J. and Hockey, J. (2005) From the womb to the tomb: towards a new model of the life course, Body and Society, 11 (2), pp.41-57.
Draper, J. (2006) Nurse education: time to get it right, Editorial in Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15 (9), pp.1069-1670.
Ward, L. and Draper, J. (2007) The factors involved in older people’s decision making with regard to influenza vaccination: a literature review, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17 (1), pp.5-16.
Draper, J. and Clark, E. (2007) Evaluating the impact of continuing professional education on healthcare practice: the rhetoric and the reality, Editorial in Nurse Education Today, 27 (6), pp.515-517.
Birch, D. and Draper, J. (2008) Exploring the challenges of delivering effective palliative care to older people with dementia in the acute hospital setting: a critical literature review, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17 (9), pp.1144-1163.
Norman, I. J., Normand. C., Watson, R., Draper, J., Borg-Longhurst, J., Jowett, S. and Coster, S. (2008) Calculating the costs of work-based training: the case of NHS Cadet Schemes, International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45 (9), pp.1310-1318
Sparrow, S. and Draper, J. (2009) The (silent) voice of Nursing, Editorial in Journal of Clinical Nursing (in press)
