Kay de Vries is Professor of Older People’s Health at De Montfort University, UK. Kay has a nursing background with a career ranging from Public Health Nursing in a remote part of New Zealand to specialising in palliative and old age care in the UK. She has a strong interest in virtue ethics, specifically humility and generosity.
Kay has held a number of research grants both on the UK and in New Zealand and her research expertise is predominantly in end of life, old age and dementia care; in acute, community and care home environments. Examples of recent research projects include; experiences of caregivers of people with dementia on acute hospital admissions and providing end of life care; assessing for risk of abuse, neglect and loss of dignity for people with dementia in care homes; she has been involved in the development of a number of training resources for healthcare providers of dementia care.
Kay is predominantly a qualitative researcher and has expertise in all qualitative research methodologies but is also experienced in using mixed methods approaches. She has developed and led a number of postgraduate research programmes and supervised a large number of MSc and PhD research students. She holds three research affiliate positions in the UK, USA and New Zealand.