Contact details

bb527@medschl.cam.ac.uk

020 7549 1400

@Ben_Bowers__

Ben is a clinical academic community nurse with 19 years clinical experience, specialising in palliative and end-of-life care.

He is a Wellcome Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Primary Care Unit and Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, and a practicing Honorary Nurse Consultant in Palliative Care. Ben is an Honorary Associate Professor, University of Nottingham, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Cardiff University. ​ Ben has been a Queen’s Nurse since 2009.

Ben is passionate about supporting community nurses to use research to enhance person-centred care and develop their own research expertise and careers. He co-founded and leads the UK-wide Community Nursing Research Forum and works closely with the Queen’s Nursing Institute in developing this inclusive community. To find out more and sign up for news, go to: www.qni.org.uk/nursing-in-the-community/community-nursing-research-forum/

Ben was recently announced as one of the 75 nurses and midwives whose work has had an especially significant impact on the NHS since its creation. He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Award for Outstanding Service in 2022 and the European Association for Palliative Care Early Researcher Award 2023, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to community nursing and palliative care research.

Ben leads a programme of interdisciplinary research at the University of Cambridge focused on improving last-days-of-life symptom control for adults dying at home. Ben’s recent high-impact NIHR funded doctoral research investigated community end-of-life anticipatory prescribing practices and patients’, family caregivers’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives of this care. Ben’s recent research publications can be found here.

In September 2022, Ben was awarded a prestigious Wellcome Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Ben’s interdisciplinary project seeks to understand the human and system factors involved in the safe, effective and timely use of injectable end-of-life symptom control medications for adults dying at home. His research will advance an inclusive design methodology. Ben works with colleagues in the Palliative & End of Life Group in Cambridge (PEliCam), the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre and patient safety colleagues at Cardiff University.