Primary Care & Health Sciences

Nicole joined Keele University in April 2011. She is Clinical Psychologist Research Fellow at the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre. Before joining Keele, Nicole was Research Fellow in Clinical/Health Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Nicole’s research focuses on the psychological aspects of sleep and pain. She is a Registered Clinical and Health Psychologist. She obtained her first degree in Psychology from the University of Hong Kong and trained as an experimental psychologist in the UK. She attended St. Anne’s College and completed her D.Phil under the supervision of Professor Allison Harvey at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research concerned sleep perception in insomnia and was supported by graduate research scholarships from St. Anne’s and an Overseas Research Student Award from Universities UK.

In 2004, Nicole won a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Croucher Foundation to develop research on chronic pain with Professor Paul Salkovskis at the Institute of Psychiatry. During the tenure of her fellowship, she conducted a programme of qualitative and quantitative studies to investigate a number of cognitive-behavioural processes hypothesised to underpin distress and disability of chronic pain. These included health anxiety, depressed mood, rumination, sleep disturbance, safety-seeking behaviours and mental defeat. In 2006, Nicole began to investigate the interaction between pain and sleep and developed a brief hybrid treatment that simultaneously addresses insomnia and chronic pain. This line of research was supported by a personal award to Nicole from the National Institute of Health Research (Department of Health).

In collaboration with colleagues at King’s Health Partners, Nicole is currently conducting a series of studies further examining the influence of psychological factors on chronic health conditions characterised by severe pain and sleep problems. These projects are supported by Back Care and Arthritis Research UK.

• Chronic pain (mental defeat, rumination, safety-seeking behaviour, psychological flexibility, health anxiety, fatigue, physical activity, suicidality, resilience)
• Insomnia (sleep misperception, cognitive arousal, physiological arousal, clock monitoring, time estimation, beliefs and attitudes about sleep)
• Cognitive-behavioural therapy (hybrid treatment)

• HPC Registered Clinical Psychologist

• HPC Registered Health Psychologist

• Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society

• Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London

• Scientific Committee, British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies

Examples of Public Engagement:

• Interview with SLEEPclinician.com and PAINclinician.com - http://painclinician.com/video/id/101

• Radio Interview with Pain Concern, Airing Pain : Episode 1 : 28th September 2010 - http://www.ableradio.com/podcasts/airing-pain

• Internet Review - http://healthskills.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/if-youre-not-asleep-get-out-of-bed/