Sasha Johnston

NHSE Clinical Fellow (Mental Health - South West England), NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow, Research Paramedic and SWASFT Senior Mental Health Lead

South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) and NHS England

Sasha Johnston is a Paramedic and NHS England (NHSE) Clinical Fellow for mental health who has worked in the UK and the Caribbean since 2002. She has completed a PgCert in Advanced Practice and a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded Masters in Clinical Research. As the interface across a number of workstreams, Sasha supports ambulance employee and student mental health and wellbeing initiatives to help improve outcomes for colleagues as well as patients.

She has been awarded a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship, alongside an NHSE Stipend, to complete a PhD. Her research interest is ambulance staff mental health and wellbeing, with an emphasis on organisational support and cultural change. Her current research programme will develop and test a dedicated space for employees to reflect, discuss, identify, and connect to support through a Doctorate of Philosophy in Experimental Psychology with the University of Oxford. The websites for this work can be found at https://swastcpd.co.uk/research/ambulance-staff-wellbeing-research/ and https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/sasha-johnston

Sasha is a founding member of both the College of Paramedics and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives employee mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention steering groups. She is a confident public speaker who has discussed ambulance staff wellbeing at a number of conferences, and on television, radio and other media.