Dr Marion McAllister
Marion McAllister is a genetic counsellor and MRC Research Fellow in Health Services Research at The University of Manchester based in The Nowgen Centre.
Marion’s current research is to develop a psychometrically sound questionnaire for use as an outcome measure for clinical genetics services. The questionnaire will be a measure of ‘empowerment’, and is based on Marion’s previous qualitative research. Marion is funded by an MRC Post-Doctoral Training Fellowship in Health Services Research, and as well as completing the research, another aim of her fellowship is to learn new research methods in health services research. Marion is supervised by Prof Chris Todd, Director of Research at The School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, The University of Manchester (http://www.nursing.manchester.ac.uk/staff/ChrisTodd) and by Prof Graham Dunn, Head of the Health Methodology Research Group, The University of Manchester (http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/staff/1470). Marion is collaborating with Prof Shoshana Shiloh, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University and with Dr Alex Wood, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Manchester.
To find out more visit the website for Marion’s project: www.geneticsforpatients.org.uk and visit her Medical Research Council pages.
Marion joined Nowgen in 2003 as part of the Valuation and Evaluation of Clinical Genetics Services research theme. She led on the qualitative arm of the Nowgen research programme, involving focus groups and interviews with patients of clinical genetics services, patient group representatives, and clinicians. This led to development of a grounded theory model of ‘empowerment’ summarising the patient benefits from using clinical genetics services. Marion also contributed to a systematic review of outcome measures used to evaluate clinical genetics services, and a Delphi survey to explore genetics professionals and patients’ views about which outcome domains are most appropriate to measure the patient benefits of using clinical genetics services
In addition to her research at Nowgen, Marion is an Honorary Genetic Counsellor at the North West Regional Clinical Genetics Service at St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester. Marion is also an Honorary Lecturer for the MSc in Genetic Counselling at The University of Manchester, where she teaches the Research Skills module of the MSc course and supervises some of the MSc research projects.
Marion has an Honours degree in Genetics from Trinity College Dublin (1985) and an MSc in Biotechnology (1989). Marion’s experience is broad, having worked as a management consultant in the London office of Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) for four years, leaving in 1994 to complete the MSc in Genetic Counselling at The University of Manchester. She followed that with a PhD in Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University, investigating psychosocial aspects of predictive genetic testing for a hereditary cancer syndrome, completed in 1999. Since then, she has worked as genetic counsellor at the North West Regional Clinical Genetics Service at St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester.
