Q and A with Sarah Bailey – Associate Professor

Posted by ma403

20 June 2023

Q and A with Sarah Bailey

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and research and/or career to this point?

Patients with early stages of cancer sometimes present to their GP with non-specific symptoms. Because these symptoms tend to be very common, and are much more likely to be caused by something other than cancer, it is difficult to identify if patients would benefit from a suspected cancer referral. More specific symptoms tend to be associated with advanced stage disease (although this is not always the case). My research is focussed on helping GPs identify patients who would benefit from investigation for suspected cancer, with the aim of catching cancer earlier to improve patient outcomes.

I took the long route into cancer diagnosis as a graduate my first research job was in dentistry and later in child health. Having enjoyed the observational research study I carried out as part of my Master of Public Health, I moved to cancer diagnosis research to start my PhD in 2014, which studied cancer diagnosis following thrombocytosis in primary care. I found that 11% of men and 6% of women aged 40 years and over with a high platelet count were diagnosed with cancer within a year. This was an exciting finding; the platelet count was a largely ignored part of the full blood count prior to my PhD. The findings have been integrated into health policy in the UK and internationally.

What are you aiming to do through your fellowship/new post, or what is your current research focus?

The work I carried out during my PhD was so interesting and it was great to see a translation from research into change in practice, so I decided to continue my research career in primary care cancer detection. More recent studies include evaluating FIT for patients with low-risk bowel symptoms in the South West of England and studying the impact of integrating genetic risk scores for cancer into primary care. I am now an Associate Professor in the group, leading a team of researchers in these efforts.

What are you looking forward to most in starting your fellowship/new post, or the next year of your research?

One of the things I am most looking forward to in the next year is going to visit my research collaborators in the Netherlands. The aim of the visit will be to translate the cancer detection tools for diabetic patients developed in my NIHR Fellowship into Dutch primary care settings. The anticipated benefits of this visit are strengthened links with another academic primary care group and to broaden my experience of different research environments and cultures. This visit will enable international comparison of findings, best practice, and barriers for cancer detection. This learning can be applied through my research programme to benefit cancer detection in the UK.

Tell us something about yourself that may be less well known.

My first job was as an ice cream scooper at an independent ice cream parlour run by an Italian family. They would make the ice cream fresh every day and it was delicious!

Photo from my commute, by bike, to my collaborators in Utrecht in June 2022.