Professor Joan Simons

Professional biography

Joan is Head of School for Health, Wellbeing and Social Care in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies based at the Open University and Professor of Health Studies.

Joan has worked in Higher Education for over 30 years with 20 years in leadership and management roles. 

Her background is in adult education, management, leadership and coaching as well as adult and children's nursing, burns nursing and community health.and pain management research,  

Joan is an expert in the field of adult education applied to practice. Her distinctive intellectual contribution comes from a strengths based position, focussing on those in society who are underprivileged or at a disadvantage in their ability to achieve their potential, and at the same time recognising the best of what is, to enhance students experience, so that they can meet their study goals and truly experience life changing learning. 

Awards and Accreditation

Joan is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in recognition of her strategic leadership in influencing student learning. 

Joan was awarded a Travel Scholarship from the Florence Nightingale Foundation in 2012 to undertake an appreciative enquiry project on international practice in the management of children's pain. This meant spending time at three study sites in the UK, Sweden and Australia. On completion of the Travel Scholarship project, the information was collated and Joan developed a new model of pain management, that harnessed the best practice from all three study sites. This model focuses on the confidence of nurses and the involvement of parents to improve the management of their children's pain post surgery. The model was published in Pain Magagement Nursing Journal in 2015. 

WellChild the National Charity for Sick Children provided funding for a feaability study on the innovative pain managment framework. This involved interviews with specailist pain management teams in children's units and children's hospitals across the UK, resulting in three online assets for practitioners and parents, that have been endorsed by the Royal College of Nursing. 

Joan has recently completed a research study focussed on developing a resource for parents to facilitate their involvement in the management of their child's pain in hospital.

Extending her work on exploring how to improve the management of children's pain in hospital, Joan was awarded funding from the General Nursing Council Trust to work with colleagues to explore the views and perspectives of parents, children and young people and nurses. This study involved the use of Cognitive Interviewing and has resulted in a new free online course. 

Recognising the rise in the number of students who are studying with a mental health condition, Joan has lead on a three year project  with colleagues to identify best practice in the provision of support by tutors for students who have a mental health condition. 

Joan in a member of the Council of Deans of Health and an expert Lead  Assessor for the Office for Students. 

Research interests

Joan’s research expertise is in both distance learning and the management of pain, and allied interests concern child health, childhood obesity and parenting.

Pain management has received a higher profile in recent years and a situation has now developed where the knowledge of pain management is lagging behind the delivery of evidence based pain management. There are now standards for pain management, in particular for acute pain in children, but there is little evidence that nurses have managed to meet these standards. Nurses are aware of the need to improve the pain management of children but there is a recognised lack of provision of education on how best to manage children's pain.

Joan's work has addressed the paucity of practice based research in the management of childrren's pain through the publication of an influential book on children's, parents' and practitioners' stories of children's pain as well as articles on the expertise of parents in managing the pain of their child with complex needs.

Joan’s work has also focussed on the health and wellbeing of children and in particular how to tackle the pressing challenge of childhood obesity. Joan has edited three online editions of Journal of Child Health Care on Childhood Obesity, Adolescence and Learning Disability.   

Teaching interests

Joan has demonstrated excellent innovative practice in her scholarship work, situated in a strengths based approach, in recognition of the multiple challenges and disadvantages of part time students. Her approach to innovation is rooted in a stance of conceptualizing resilience, where students faced with a challenge have the ability, through support, to adjust to that challenge and continue with their studies. Joan’s focus has been to identify what students value and the coping mechanisms they utilize in the face of adversity that enables them to succeed, as well as the institutional factors that students identify as contributing to them achieving their study goals.

Joan has led on five funded scholarship projects, firstly on a level 1 gateway module exploring student resilience followed by an appreciative inquiry project exploring the antecedents and consequences of graduate success so that the factors identified as promoting success, could be reinforced and supported, but also to identify where graduates had found employment.  

The third study involved a deep dive on data relating to students who non formally withdraw from a high population level one distance learning module. The aim of the project was to identify the unvoiced needs of students who withdrew from the module in order to influence processes to provide support in future. Her fourth Faultly wide project, working with colleagues, focused on Employabilty and evaluating a wider understanding of how students benefit from studying at the OU in relation to three gains -  learning, working and personal gains, as outlined by Kellett and Clifton (2018). Her most recent study explored the views of  39 Associate Lecturers in relation to their knowledge, skills and experience of supporting students with a mental health difficulty. The findings are being used to develop a Confidence Framework for Associate Lecturers to use in supporting students. 

Joan is passionate about identifying and promoting teaching excellence and is overseeing a range of projects highlighting and rewarding the teaching excellence of colleagues in the Faculty of Wellbeing Education and Language Studies.

External collaborations

Joan has been an external examiner in a range of universities for over 25 years, including De Montfort Unviersity, Bournemouth University and Imperial College London. Her current External Examiner role is on the  Nursing programme at Brunel University.