Biography

I am a respiratory physician with a clinical and research interest in all aspects of occupational lung disease. My current job involves working across boundaries through the Centre for Workplace Health (CWH), a tripartite organisation formed between the University of Sheffield, the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton. I am committed to promoting evidence-based practice in occupational lung disease through post-graduate training, and regularly lecture to clinical and non-clinical audiences in this area. I have co-authored national Standards of Care for occupational asthma and COPD, as well as contributing to silica health surveillance guidelines for the UK. I have also produced e-learning modules on occupational asthma for the British Thoracic Society and BMJ Learning which have been completed by over ten thousand healthcare professionals from over 100 countries. I am the co-organiser of a national BTS Short Course in Occupational and Environmental Lung Disease, the current chair of the British Thoracic Society Specialist Advisory Group and an active member of the national Group of Occupational Respiratory Disease Specialists (GORDS). I have a wide range of current research interests through my roles as Technical Team Lead for the Centre for Workplace Health, and a Principal Medical Adviser to HSE. Current projects include long latency respiratory disease in foundry workers; respiratory health in UK woodworkers; extrinsic allergic alveolitis due to metalworking fuids; and the role of previous asbestos exposure in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. I am currently supervising a PhD student on the HSE funded Respiratory health in British woodworkers woodworking project, and co-supervising a PhD student on a Wellcome funded project entitled Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Job Exposure Study. My clinical duties include being a core member of both the occupational and interstitial lung disease MDTs, and running weekly clinics in these areas. The occupational respiratory outpatient clinic focusses on the diagnosis and management of work-related asthma, occupational COPD, silicosis, and asbestos-related lung disease. In addition my interstitial lung disease clinic focuses on occupational and environmental cases of extrinsic allergic alveolitis.


Research Interest

Occupational lung disease, Extrinsic allergic alveolitis/hypersensitivity pneumonitis, Asbestos-related lung disease.