Alan Simpson is Professor of Mental Health Nursing, working across two faculties at King’s College London (KCL) in London, the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care, and the Health Service and Population Research Department in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. He is Co-Director of the UCL-KCL Mental Health Policy Research Unit and Deputy Director of the Qualitative Applied Health Research Centre (QUAHRC) at KCL. He works closely with South London and The Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

Alan is an experienced mental health nurse researcher developing a programme of high-quality research with the aim of improving the delivery and experience of mental healthcare and mental health nursing across a range of service settings. His research is collaboratively developed and conducted with service users, carers, clinicians, service managers, academics, and policy makers. Recent work includes studies of activities on inpatient wards, the use of surveillance technologies in mental healthcare, and improving the physical healthcare of people with severe mental illness. Alan was involved in the development of Safewards and was a co-investigator on the original trial. Recently, he has been exploring adaptation and implementation of Safewards in Children and Young People’s mental health units and Emergency Departments.