My wife, Jan Reed, who has died of advanced multiple sclerosis aged 56, was professor of health and social care for older adults at Northumbria University. A leading nurse academic, she wrote or co-edited seven books on topics relating to healthcare and research.
Born in Gateshead to Don Robson, a businessman, and his wife, Ruth (nee Hailes), a teacher, she went to Hookergate school and then gained a place at Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University). She and I met in Newcastle, in the Literary and Philosophical Society library. We were both studying for nursing exams. Jan graduated in 1981, at a time when degree-level nursing was still a rarity.
She was one of the first nurses to enter an innovative PhD scheme at the polytechnic, designed to foster future academic leaders in the profession. She went on to take up a postdoctoral research fellowship at Newcastle University. We married in 1984 and set up home in the city, later moving to Hexham in Northumberland.
From early on in her career Jan believed that research should make a practical difference to people’s lives. In her early 20s she had worked as a volunteer at a Rape Crisis centre in Newcastle and this experience made her determined to use her professional position to help others have a voice.
She saw research as a collaborative process and believed it was important to communicate with the older people actually using social and health services. With her colleague, Sue Procter, she co-edited Practitioner Research in Health Care (1995), an important text for health and social care professionals. One of her last books was about the research method “appreciative inquiry”, which explores what works well in an organisation rather than simply identifying problems.
She retired from academic life in 2010 because of her deteriorating health but continued to write, publishing articles on Zen Buddhism, which she practised for many years.
Jan is survived by me, our children, Chloe and Davy, her brother, Ian, and her stepmother, Jenny.
