I qualified as a nurse in 1991 and went on to complete a BSc (Hons) Professional Practice and a MSc Advanced Nurse Practitioner. My clinical background began in medicine, specifically elderly medicine, dermatology and haematology. As a senior nurse I have worked in elderly medicine, Community Hospitals, Responsive Services and as a Nurse Specialist for Older People supporting Care Homes. I was a General Manager covering Community Hospitals and Urgent Care and the Head of Community Services for Martlets, a Hospice in Hove. My current post is as the Joint Clinical Services Director at St Michael's Hospice (Hastings and Rother) and St Wilfrid's Hospice (Eastbourne). I am an associate committee member of the Community Hospitals Association having previously been Chair and the  lead for QI and Innovation and Best Practice. I am privileged to be a Queens Nurse.

I was the Project Lead for the Q Exchange Project: Community Hospitals: Embedding Covid-19 positive impact changes through shared learning

Some of my past works relevant to QI are:
My experience of improvement and delivering change has seen me setting up new services e.g. therapy input to a Rapid Access Medical Unit or the Care Home Support Team, moving services e.g. Community Beds, changing therapy provision across an Intermediate Care/Admission Avoidance Service to 7 day, improving the care of deteriorating patients through accurate recording of observations and early identification and management of Sepsis  at Crawley (published on the Academy of NHS Fabulous Stuff website), being Falls Lead for the Trust through to small scale changes like introducing specific crockery to enhance the experience of relatives of dying patients and  increase awareness of their presence on the ward.

I have accessed leadership and transformation programmes via Hospice UK, Lane 4, Capita, NHS Elect, Conrane (Transforming Care/Case Management), the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the School for Change Agents. I was part of a team that won an NHS Estates award for the introduction of Protected Mealtimes including development of an audit tool. I worked with the RCN to develop a resource for students working with older people.

I have used project management tools, Plan Do Study Act cycles, Root Cause Analysis, Productive Ward methodologies, change management processes and informal techniques to effect change and deliver an improvement. Striving for excellence has been a constant throughout my career. Learning to effect positive change is something that I have tried to achieve through learning from colleagues, coaching, working with others on specific problems or issues as well as through academic routes. I undertook a Quality Module as part of my MSc which served to whet my appetite for improvement further.

Recently working with the Community Hospitals Association in a period where we have to evaluate the efficacy, viability and sustainability of the group and design options for the future of the association has exposed me to change in a different environment and allowed me to develop broader networks and work with a more disparate group of people. During Covid-19 we have redesigned the way we work with members and updated our website to support this work.