Professor Patrick Doherty is Chair of Cardiovascular Health in the Department of Health Sciences and Director of the National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation (NACR). Patrick was former president of the British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR) and former Chair of the Cardiac Rehabilitation Section of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC). He continues to be highly research active in the area of cardiovascular disease prevention and rehabilitation with over 120 peer reviewed journal papers in the last ten years.
Patrick was Head of Research and Head of Department for eight years and in that time he led a successful Research Excellence Framework (REF) submission within Unit of Assessment 2 (Health services and public health research). His research has led to significant impact and change in health service policy and cardiac rehabilitation delivery which culminated in a world-leading impact case rating in REF 2021.
Patrick’s commitment to cardiovascular disease prevention and rehabilitation led to his appointment as NHS Clinical Lead for Cardiac Rehabilitation (2013) where he supported service innovation in the NHS and led the development of an evidence-based clinical pathway (Department of Health Cardiac Rehabilitation Commissioning Pack) which is continues to inform NHS routine practice standards. His research continues to influence clinical practice through improvements in uptake and the quality of cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation services. Patrick has also developed a chair based exercise programme that formed an integral part of a successful NIHR funded programme grant (REACH-HF) and led a substantial update of the Angina Plan (2020) which is a successful self-management approach for patients with cardiac related chest pain.
Patrick's research and academic supervision has supported 16 PhD students (11 international) to success with many continuing into post-doctoral collaborative research. He continues to supervise national and international research students in the area of cardiovascular health, physical activity improvement, exercise prescription and patient self-management interventions.
Patrick's research interests are in cardiac rehabilitation, cardiovascular disease prevention and exercise.
Patrick would welcome PhD projects on observational research using large databases. His group hosts the largest cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation database in Europe and would welcome interest from PhD students who wish to become part of our established research team which has over twelve successful PhD completions. The aim of this project is to identify top performing rehab programmes delivered in routine practice and develop meaningful ways of presenting patient outcomes at local hospital level. Patrick would also be interested in supervising PhDs in the following areas: Cardiovascular disease prevention and rehabilitation; patient self-management approaches in chronic disease.
This research group supports a range of methods including RCTs, systematic reviews and observational research using large databases.
There is no direct funding for PhD students as part of this project but the team will commit time and expertise to support the candidate to completion of their PhD.
Present postgraduate researchers/students