Dr Jo Sutton-Klein

by | 29 Apr 2025 | Academy fellows | 0 comments

Jo Sutton-Klein.Overview

Cohort: 8
PhD start date: October 2024

In 2015/16, I completed an MSc in Social Epidemiology at University College London. Under the supervision of Professor Jenny Mindell, I analysed for my dissertation a large dataset of Health Survey for England. I wanted to explore the association between socioeconomic deprivation, ambient indoor temperature and health.

I graduated from medical school at the University of Sheffield in 2018.

In 2021/22, I joined the Centre for Urgent and Emergency Care Research (CURE) at the University of Sheffield as research assistant with Professor Sue Mason, where I contributed to a variety of emergency care studies. These included research on uncertainty tolerance in emergency medicine registrars, training of emergency medicine advanced clinical practitioners and an evaluation of a new NHS emergency care service.

In 2022, I commenced an academic clinical fellowship in Emergency Medicine in Manchester. I was a joint winner of the Rod Little award at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Annual Scientific Conference for best trainee research.

As part of my academic clinical fellowship, I have worked with Dr Alex de Little (University of Leeds) to conduct a study looking at the sonic environment of emergency departments. As part of this study, we have run several public engagement workshops, and collaborated with the Care Aesthetics Research group (University of Manchester). I also undertook formal training in anthropology at The University of Manchester.

PhD title

Exploring the association between socioeconomic deprivation and patient experience in emergency departments.

Brief summary of PhD project

Patients from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds are much more likely to attend emergency departments than patients from less deprived socioeconomic backgrounds (Sutton-Klein J, Lewis J, Shephard N, et al, 2022, and Office for National Statistics, 2023).

There is evidence from small studies that patients from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have worse experiences in emergency departments (Turner AJ, Francetic I, Watkinson R, Gillibrand S, Sutton M, 2022).

I want to explore how socioeconomic deprivation is associated with patient experience in emergency departments and why that association might exist. To do this, I will use quantitative and qualitative methods.

I will analyse a dataset of all emergency department attendances across England over a 12-year period. I will also undertake in-depth ethnographic fieldwork over one year in an urban emergency department.

By combining large-scale quantitative data analysis with focused ethnographic fieldwork, I will contribute a comprehensive perspective to our understanding of how and why socioeconomic deprivation impacts patient experience in emergency departments.

I hope my research will contribute to knowledge that will help us consider how to reduce these socioeconomically driven health inequalities.

References

Key collaborators/supervisors

  • Dr Fiona Sampson (University of Sheffield – primary supervisor)
  • Dr Gillian Evans (University of Manchester)
  • Professor Steve Goodacre (University of Sheffield)
  • Professor Rick Body (University of Manchester)

Specialty interest/techniques

  • Big data analysis
  • Ethnography
  • Mixed methods
  • Data visualisation

Career aspirations

My long-term career aim is to contribute to improving emergency departments so they can become more equitable, caring and safe. I am drawn to study and work in emergency departments, as they are spaces where the consequences of poverty are concentrated.

I aspire to work as a clinical academic in emergency medicine. I want to use my perspective as a clinician and mixed methods researcher to discover knowledge that can be used to reduce health inequalities in emergency departments.

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