Professor Steven's research focuses on workforce development and wellbeing for the enhancement of safety and quality in professional practice through a focus on:

•             Health professions education, &

•             The embedding of skills, knowledge, and innovations in practice.

She has particular expertise in qualitative methodologies but uses a range of theoretical frameworks, qualitative and mixed methods as appropriate to work spanning from development and implementation work, through to exploration and evaluation. 

Prof Steven has undertaken research across a spectrum of settings and published a range of academic articles, book chapters and monographs, including developing work on ‘emotional safety for learning’.

Her portfolio includes research on: education for new roles and practices, inter-professional education, work based learning, mentoring, knowledge translation, practice and workforce development, continuing professional development, co-design and implementation of fatigue risk management strategies, implementation of enhanced care for older people, early warning scores, hydration apps in care homes.

Alison Steven is Professor of Research in Nursing and Health Professions Education at Northumbria University, Visiting Professor at the University of Genoa Italy and Faculty member of the Italian Inter-university Research Centre on Nursing Ethics.

She completed her PhD (Discourse analysis of clinical skills education) in 2002 at Newcastle University. Prior to joining Northumbria University in 2008 Alison worked in the Faculty of Medical Sciences and in the Postgraduate Institute for Medicine and Dentistry at Newcastle university.

Her research focuses on workforce development and wellbeing for the enhancement of safety and quality in professional practice through a focus on:

• Health professions education, &
• The embedding of skills, knowledge, and innovations in practice.

She uses a range of theoretical frameworks, qualitative and mixed methods as appropriate to work spanning from development and implementation work, through to exploration and evaluation.  

Prof Steven has undertaken research across a spectrum of settings and published a range of academic articles, book chapters and monographs. She led the EU co-funded SLIPPs project (2016-2019) which resulted in the development of the SLIPPs Learning Event Recording Tool (SLERT) which has been translated into multiple languages and used across 8 countries. Prof Steven also developed the concept of ‘Emotional safety for learning’ which emerged from a large UK Patient safety education study (2006-2009). The concept then evolved across a number of subsequent research projects.

Her portfolio includes research on Patient safety education, Work based/experiential learning, Workforce wellbeing and fatigue, Education for new roles and practices, Mentoring, Knowledge translation and implementation, practice and workforce development.