Gabriel Abotsie

Position

CLAHRC Fellow 2014

About

Gabriel currently works as the Men’s Wellbeing Nursing Lead at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT). Gabriel has worked for NSFT since completing his Bachelor of Nursing Degree at the University of Dundee in 2005. During this time, he has gained a broad range of experience, working primarily with people with a diagnosis of severe mental illness. He completed an MSc in Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia in 2011, during which this he developed his knowledge of evidence based practice and research methodologies in health research. This qualification led to his current job as a Research Nurse in the NSFT. This new includes: recruiting eligible patients into national portfolio studies; the promoting of research; and engaging with services and clinical teams in order to embed research into the very fabric of clinical care. He is an active member of the Research Governance Committee at NSFT and also a facilitator of the NIHR Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training course in research. He has a particular interest in physical health problems among people with the diagnosis of serious mental illness (SMI). Gabriel's project is titled 'An Early Intervention Service’s Physical Healthcare Project: Lessons to inform practice'. The physical health of people with serious mental illness (SMI) is known to be very poor. This project aims to embed physical healthcare promotion and monitoring into the day-to-day practice of an Early Intervention (EI) Services through the implementation and evaluation of a training package designed to educate mental health practitioners about the physical health inequalities affecting people with SMI. The training will stress the prevention of physical health co-morbidities as well as their treatment and management. Using both qualitative and quantitative measure, the training will be evaluated through: (i) assessing its impact on staff attitudes towards physical health screening and monitoring; (ii) measuring the impact on service users of physical health screening; and (iii) identifying the enablers and barriers to its implementation.