Katie Herron
Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Research Lead for Pain Management Programmes
Biography
Dr Katie Herron has recently joined the Pain Management Programme (PMP) Department at The Walton Centre. In addition to her clinical work, she is PMP Research Lead with a key agenda to drive PMP themed projects within the service well as establish external collaborations across academic institutions and other NHS departments.
After attaining a Psychology Undergraduate Degree at The University of Liverpool and working for a year as a part-time research assistant in cognitive neuroscience and health care assistant, she was awarded an ERSC grant to study for MSc and PhD at The University of Surrey. Her PhD thesis explored the role of sleep in post-stroke rehabilitation. In order to pursue her chosen career directly working psychologically with patients, she completed a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Her enthusiasm for working in pain services sparked during her final year placement at The Pain Management Centre, University College London Hospitals, where she stayed for 6 years. The North West drew her back in 2018 where she took a Principal Clinical Psychologist post within The Pain Medicine Department at The Royal Liverpool prior to her consultant post at Walton.
Her main research interests include specialist PMP development and outcomes, opioid management, inpatient pain management psychology (acute & chronic pain), prehabilitation and prevention, pain management in primary care, sleep management in chronic conditions and neuroplasticity in the context of behavioural change. Read more about her work here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katie-Herron
Selected publications
Herron et al. (2024). Moving Pain Management Programmes (PMP) into the Digital Age: development and evaluation of an online PMP for people with chronic pain. Frontiers in Pain;5:1337734. doi: 10.3389/fpain.2024.1337734. PMID: 38638532; PMCID: PMC11024331
Edwards, S., Petersen, K., Mandeville, A., Williams, A. Herron, K. (2020). ‘ReConnect’: a model for working with persistent pain patients on improving sexual relationships. British Journal of Pain, 14(2): 82-91.