Professor and Associate Director Nursing Research
Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Room 2356
Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University
Western Faculty Scholar 2023-2025
Director, PEPR Partnership
Links
Western University Profile (uwo.ca)
Web: PEPR Partnership | COPE II Study
Twitter: @PeprPartnership | @cope_study | @FionaWebster1
Biosketch
Professor Webster’s program of research is built upon a career-long interest in applying the tools, theories and insights of sociology to explore and improve the care of complex patients who suffer with chronic pain and other health conditions using largely ethnographic approaches. She has established herself as a nationally, and internationally respected scholar, conducting research at the intersection between health and culture and its impact on health equity, and social determinants of health. Her research effectively spans applied and social science/sociology outlets/scholarship, as evidenced by her many Tri-Council grants from both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and her publication record in both leading sociology and clinical journals. She enjoys an international reputation as a leading methodologist, having deployed and written about key/innovative social science methods (i.e., institutional ethnography) within the fields of medicine and nursing.
Research Interests
- Chronic pain and marginalization
- Institutional ethnography
Sample Publications
Webster, F., Connoy, R., Rice, K., Sud, A., Pinto, A., Upshur R., & Dale, C.(2022). Chronic struggle: the situated experience of marginalization and chronic pain. Journal of Pain, Volume 24, Issue 3, March 2023, Pages 437-448..
Webster F, Connoy L, Longo R, Ahuja D, Amtmann D, Anderson A, Ashton-James CE, Boyd H, Chambers CT, Cook KF, Cowan P, Crombez G, Feinstein AB, Fuqua A, Gilam G, Jordan I, Mackey SC, Martins E, Martire LM, O’Sullivan P, Richards DP, Turner JA, Veasley C, Würtzen H, Yang SY, You DS, Ziadni M, Darnall BD. Patient Responses to the Term Pain Catastrophizing: Thematic Analysis of Cross-sectional International Data. J Pain. 2022 Oct 11:S1526-5900(22)00418-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2022.10.001. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36241160.
Webster, F., Connoy, L., Sud, A., Pinto, A., & Katz, J. (2020). Grappling with chronic pain and poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian Journal of Pain, 4(1), 125-128.
Webster, F., Rice, K., & Sud, A. (2020). A critical content analysis of media reporting on opioids: The social construction of an epidemic. Social Science & Medicine, 244, Article 112642.
Dale, C., & Webster, F. (2020). Need caring, compassion or comfort? Sorry, I’m a doctor. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 192(25), E687.
Webster, F., Gastaldo, D., Durant, S., Eakin, J., Gladstone, B., Parsons, J., Peter, E., Shaw, J. (2019). Doing science differently: A framework for assessing the careers of qualitative scholars in the health sciences. International Journal of Qualitative Methods.
Webster, F., Rice, K., Bhattacharyya, O., Katz, J., Dale, C., & Upshur, R. (2019). An ethnography of chronic pain management in primary care: The social organization of physicians’ work in the midst of the opioid crisis. PLOS One, 14(5), Article e0215148.
