Dr. Marcia Kirwan

Dr Marcia Kirwan is an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, Dublin. She qualified as a nurse from St. Bartholomew's Hospital and City University, London, and subsequently as a midwife from the University of Wales, Cardiff. Marcia currently teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate level across programmes within the school. She is committed to teaching excellence and is experienced in programme management, module development and quality monitoring. Marcia has over 30 years nursing and healthcare experience including specialist nursing roles, and national leadership roles. Her postgraduate qualifications include an MSc in Education and Training Management and a PhD from DCU.

Marcia's research lies within three distinct but overlapping themes: patient safety, missed or rationed nursing care and health workforce planning, and her collaborations on this work extend across many European countries. In-keeping with that focus on patient safety and nursing research she is currently PI on a 4 year HRB funded project (2022-2026) COST2CARE: Addressing the economic and human cost of hospital acquired and nurse-sensitive adverse events in older patients through optimal use of routine discharge data and measurement of missed nursing care. This project aims to contribute to safer hospital care and reduced healthcare costs associated with older patients in acute hospitals in Ireland, through routinely collected hospital discharge data (HIPE) and routine measurement of missed nursing care. She recently co-authored a Cochrane Review on the substitution of nurses for physicians in hospital settings and is working on two further reviews. Additionally she has represented Ireland on the management committee of a European COST Action Project CA 15208: Rationing – Missed Nursing Care: An International and multidimensional problem (RANCARE).