My friend Jan Dewing, who has died aged 61 of ovarian cancer, was the Sue Pembrey chair in nursing and director of the Centre for Person-centred Practice Research at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, where she was also head of the university’s graduate research school.
Jan was a leading scholar in person-centred practice, with a particular focus on care services for people living with dementia; she worked with health and social care teams to ensure care was delivered in a way that respected who the person was and not according to a clinical diagnosis. This approach had been developed by Tom Kitwood in the late 1980s and Jan built on, challenged and extended this work. She also brought this kind of thinking to wider health services.
