Psychology of respiratory medicine

Dr Hutton completed her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. Prior to joining Liverpool University Hospitals, she was a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at King’s College Hospital for 15 years and worked closely with the Integrated Respiratory Team there. She contributed to the 2018 update of the National Institute for Healthcare and Excellence (NICE) guideline for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). She co-authored the 2016 London Respiratory Network Briefing Paper on The value of psychology and psychologists in supporting people with COPD and respiratory teams.

Andreas von Leupoldt studied psychology at the University of Hamburg, Germany where he also received his PhD in 2003 and his Postdoctoral Lecture Qualification on habilitation and venia legendi for psychology in 2007. He worked as a Research Fellow at the Department of Physiological Sciences and the National Institute of Mental Health Center (NIMH) for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA between 2008 and 2010. Moreover, he worked as a Principal Investigator/Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany and the Department of Systems Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany between 2006 and 2013. Since 2013, he is Professor for Health Psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is examining the interactions between psychology and the respiratory system in healthy individuals and in patients with respiratory disease Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and asthma with a specific focus on bio-psycho-social aspects of breathlessness. He is specifically interested in how psychological factors such as affective states, personality traits, learning processes, attention and social aspects interact with the subjective experience and the brain processing of breathlessness as well as with the treatment of affected patients. Using a multi-modal approach, he is studying these interactions together with international collaborators from different disciplines, such as rehabilitation sciences, pneumology and neurosciences both in the lab and in clinical settings. Partly, these studies extend to the perception of other aversive bodily sensations such as pain and include self-report measures, behavioural studies, exercise tests, peripheral psychophysiological measurements, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). He has published extensively in leading journals of different scientific fields including respiratory medicine, psychology, neurosciences and pain and has served in active roles for several international societies of these fields.

Dr Sean Parker is a Consultant Respiratory Physician at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. He trained in Oxford and Newcastle. In addition to being a general respiratory physician, he has run a specialist cough clinic since 2010, and has a particular interest in non-pharmacological cough control therapy, psychological aspects of cough and has contributed to recent trials of novel antitussives. Dr Parker chairs the British Thoracic Society (BTS) specialist advisory group on cough and is currently co-chair of a BTS clinical statement group on cough.

Jen Butler is a Speech and Language Therapist, with a specialist interest in laryngeal disorders.  She is an integral member of the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) and Respiratory teams at Newcastle Hospitals, helping to bridge the gap between these services.  Jen leads initial laryngoscopy assessments for patients referred to ENT for assessment of voice, swallowing, cough and/or breathing difficulties.  This includes using continuous laryngeal examination with symptom provocation using irritants, foods, vocal tasks and physical exercise.  Such assessments are carried out in standalone outpatient clinics and within severe asthma multidisciplinary clinics.  From an intervention perspective, Jen is passionate about taking a biopsychosocial approach to managing laryngeal disorders and finds this invaluable for supporting patients’ understanding of their symptoms and optimising progress with therapy.

Outside of her clinical roles, Jen is a guest lecturer and clinical educator at Newcastle University.  In 2020 she completed her Masters’ in Public Health and Health Service Research at Newcastle University. She has hosted patient engagement groups to identify patient-focussed research priorities and has received academic funding from the National Institute for Health Research, and Health Education England to pursue these priorities.  Jen’s research to date has included exploring healthcare utilisation of adults with Inducible laryngeal obstruction (ILO); identifying the most salient ingredients of complex interventions for ILO, and exploring the information needs of people with upper airway disorders.

Jen co-authored the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ position paper for The Role of SLTs in Upper Airway Disorders; and the National Consensus Statement for managing ILO during the COVID-19 pandemic.   She has also co-developed web-based video education resources for patients with laryngeal disorders which have proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic