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Staff Profile

Professor Brian Lunn

  • Address: School of Medicine
    The Medical School
    Newcastle University
    NE2 4HH
Background

I retired from my clinical post in May 2017 but continued in my academic role as Sub Dean for Assessment until May 2021 when I fully retired and moved into my current emeritus role.

Current roles

Speciality Member National Anti-Doping panel 

GMC MLA Applied Knowledge Test Advisor

Emeritus professor

Previous Positions

Chair:

Professional Standards Review Committee

Examinations Sub Committee

Assessment Working Group

Course Director Stage 3 and 5 Mental Health Rotations

Member:

Board of Medical Studies

Sub Deans Group

Senior Officers Group

Phase 1 Coordinating Committee

Phase 2 Coordinating Committee

Medical Schools Council Assessment Alliance

GMC Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment Sub Group

External:

Examiner RCPsych

Chair RCPsych OSCE Panel

Chair RCPsych CASC Panel

Associate Dean for Examinations RCPsych

Member Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Assessment Group

Clinical Director for Medical Education (Undergraduate) Northumberland Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust

Subject Advisor Higher Education Academy

External examiner:

Hong Kong University MB BS

Sri Lankan MD Psychiatry

Hong Kong FPsych

Birmingham University BMedSc in Psychiatry

Leeds University MBBS 

Cardiff University MSc in Psychiatry

Dundee University MB BS



 

Research

Research Interests

Early work focussed on the Neurobiology of Cognition with research involving the use of neuro-endocrine probes to examine their effects on subjects cognition.

In parallel with this another focus was the Neuropsychiatric Consequences of Diving. Research into the neuropsychiatric consequencies had been rudimentary with a few notable exceptions. This, at least in part, can be attributed to an unwillingness to fund and/or support appropriate research by governmental agencies and the diving industry. Another reason is the dearth of researchers with an appropriate background in the neurosciences working in the field. Work focussed on identifying common patterns of cognitive impairment following hyperbaric injuries.

Another thread of this was work with the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HEA) and Department of Energy to generate guidance for assessing the fitness of individuals with psychiatric illness to dive or return to diving. This resulted in the iterative development of the UK’s MA1 Guidance.

Assessment pedagogy
This has been the focus of work over the last few years and continues to be a source of work. In particular this has included the use and utility of assessment in clinical and pre-clinical medicine. This includes undergraduate and postgraduate courses and assessments. To date work has covered:
  • developing novel clinical assessments
  • exploring the utility and validity of clinical assessments
  • developing feedback models that automatically generate output for candidates from assessment data
  • developing processes to quantify and make informed decisions from free text using Natural Language Processing (NLP) in R
  • developing approaches in NLP that reflect the semantic difference in medical texts, including feedback to medical students
Teaching

From starting as Lecturer in Neuropsychiatry in 1993 teaching was a central part of my role. Initially, in an sabbatical from clinical work at the end of this post I set up the Psychiatry Teaching Resource website, primarily aimed at Medical Students’ needs but is became widely used by others groups within the university and externally, including police psychologists, nurses and dentists as well as patient groups and the general public.`


From shifting to a Senior Lecturer/Consultant Psychiatrist role in 1998 my role in postgraduate teaching developed. These included:

  • College Tutor 1998-2002, South Tyneside
  • Educational Supervisor in Northern Deanery, School of Psychiatry
  • Clinical Director for Medical Education (Undergraduate) NTW NHS Foundation Trust until May 2017


Within the university focus shifted to development of teaching resources for psychiatry within the School of Medical Education and Open Educational Resources through membership of several HEA groups and as a contributor to and member of JISC Reusable Learning Objects Project


For the Royal College of Psychiatry (RCPsych) I was involved in the development of the Part I OSCE which I then ran for its duration. I then chaired the group designing and implementing the new MRCPsych Clinical Assessment of Skills and Competencies (CASC) before, after its implementation, passing on its running as I took up the role of Associate Dean for Examinations. My term in office there ended in June 2012 and I moved to Sub Dean of Assessment in Newcastle University Medical School.


I continue to provide support for UK Sport, Sport England and Greater Manchester Police in developing skills in coaches and hostage/crisis negotiators respectively.



Publications