Andrea is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. 

Andrea completed her PhD at the National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway in 2013. Her PhD examined the role of the Self-Regulatory model, and specifically illness perceptions, in determining breast cancer-related distress in both healthy women and women with breast cancer.  

From 2013 to 2020 Andrea worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Royal Holloway University of London. There, she worked on two NIHR-funded research programmes; ATTOM and SHAPED. The Access to Transplantation and Transplant Outcomes Measures (ATTOM) programme aimed to improve equity of access to kidney and pancreas transplantation across the UK. SHAPED (Study of HAllucinations in people with Parkinson’s, Eye Disease, and Dementia) aimed to address the gaps in knowledge and understanding of visual hallucinations in these three conditions, and to change policy and practice in how visual hallucinations are managed in the UK.

Andrea’s main research interests are broadly within health psychology, and specifically related to the issues around the impact and management of chronic illness.

Research that Andrea has been involved in include: the development of questionnaires to measure quality of life and treatment satisfaction in people with various chronic conditions; coping with chemotherapy in breast cancer; distress and adjustment in people with multiple sclerosis; and GPs’ clinical judgements and treatment decisions in people with chronic low back pain.

Supervision

Andrea welcomes enquiries about research supervision. Her main areas of supervision are the impact and management of chronic illness, including quality of life and treatment satisfaction, illness perceptions and coping with cancer, health risk perceptions, and coping with stress.

• PhD in Health Psychology, National University of Ireland, (NUI) Galway
• MPsychSc in Health Psychology (Hons), National University of Ireland, (NUI) Galway
• BA in Psychology (Hons), National University of Ireland, (NUI) Galway

• Gibbons, A., Bradley, C., Cinnirella, M. & Hann, K. E., 2024, Simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplantation: A qualitative study of partners’ experiences PLOS ONE 19, 11
• Husted, M., Gibbons, A., Cheung, W. Y. & Keating, S.,2023, COVID-19 Vaccination Hesitancy in Adults in the United Kingdom: Barriers and Facilitators to Uptake Health Psychology 42, 8, p. 584-592
• Gibbons, A., Cinnirella, M., Bayfield, J., Watson, C.J.E.W, Oniscu, G.C., Draper H., et al. (2020). Improvements in some, but not all, patient-reported outcomes following Simultaneous Pancreas and Kidney Transplantation (SPKT): a quantitative and qualitative analysis within the ATTOM programme. Transplant International. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/tri.13677
• O’Brien, J., Taylor, J-P., Ballard, C., Barker, R., Bradley, C., … Gibbons, A., et al. (2020). Visual hallucinations in neurological and ophthalmological disease: pathophysiology and management. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 91:512-519. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jnnp-2019-322702.
• Gibbons, A., & Groarke, A. (2018). Coping with chemotherapy for breast cancer: Asking women what works. European Journal of Nursing Oncology, 35, 85-91. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2018.06.003
• Dwyer, C., MacNeela, P., Durand, H., Gibbons, A., Reynolds, B, Doherty, E. et al. (2018). Judgement analysis of case severity and future risk of disability regarding chronic low back pain by general practitioners. PLoS ONE, 13, 3, 1-12. doi: e0194387.
• Groarke, A, Curtis, R., Groarke, J., Gibbons, A., & Hogan, M. (2017). Post-traumatic growth in breast cancer:  How and when do distress and stress contribute? Psycho-Oncology, 26, 967-974. doi: 10.1002/pon.4243
• Gibbons, A., Groarke, A, Curtis, R., & Groarke, J. (2017). The effect of mode of detection of breast cancer on stress and distress. Psycho-Oncology, 26, 787-792. doi: 10.1002/pon.4227
• Wu, D., Robb, M. L., Watson, C. J. E., Forsythe, J. l. R., Tomson, C. R. V., Cairns, J., Roderick, P., Johnson, R. J., Ravanan, R. Fogarty, D., Bradley, C., Gibbons, A., et al. (2017). Barriers to living donor kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom: A national observational study. Nephrology, Dialysis, Transplantation, 32(5): 890-900. doi: 10.1093/ndt/gfx036
• Gibbons, A., Cinnirella, M., Bayfield, J., Wu, D., Draper, H., Johnson, R., et al. (2017). Patient’s beliefs and preferences for kidney allocation: Qualitative findings from the ATTOM programme. BMJ Open, 7:e013896. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-013896.
• Gibbons, A., Groarke, A., & Sweeney, K. (2016). Predicting general and cancer-related distress in women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. BMC Cancer, 16:935 doi: 10.118/s12885-016-2964-z
• Gibbons, A., & Groarke, A. (2016). Can risk perceptions and illness beliefs predict breast cancer worry in healthy women? Journal of Health Psychology, 21(9), 2052-2062. doi: 10.1177/1359105315570984
• Oniscu, G.O., Ravanan, R., Wu, D., Gibbons, A., Li, B., Tomson, C. et al. (2016). Access to Transplantation and Transplant Outcome Measures (ATTOM): Study protocol of a UK wide, in-depth, prospective cohort analysis. BMJ Open, 6:e10377. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-01037.
• MacNeela, P., Gibbons, A., McGuire, B., & Murphy, A. (2010). “We need to get you focused”: General practitioners’ representations of chronic low back pain patients. Qualitative Health Research, 20, 977-986. doi: 10.1177/1049732310364219

Andrea welcomes enquiries about research supervision. Her main area of supervision is the impact and management of chronic illness, including quality of life and treatment satisfaction, illness perceptions and coping with cancer, health risk perceptions, and coping with stress.