School of Nursing and Midwifery

I started my nursing career in Gloucestershire qualifying in 1984 and worked clinically in trauma orthopedics, surgery and intensive care nursing. My academic interests revolve around health care ethics and professional practice and I gained a masters degree in medical ethics in 1991 with a specific focus on life and death decision making. I have always had a passion for education and took up post in 1991 as a registered nurse tutor at the United Midlands College of Nursing. I have a wealth of experience in curriculum design development and delivery across pre and post registration programmes with a specific expertise in placement learning, clinical skill development and clinical assessment.  Following the move of nurse education into HE I was instrumental in establishing the first fully funded practice placement facilitator roles and developing robust partnership working frameworks to facilitate placement learning. Since moving to Keele University in June 2007 I have provided dynamic leadership to the team and have led a number of innovation projects included implementation of a peer support model for staff, raising the awareness of the realities of non medical professional practice programmes for prospective students and access and progression into nursing within the new NMC standards.  I took up my current role as Head of School in September 2010. My recent focus has been around the student experience and in particular attrition and retention which was complimented by me being the west midlands HEI representative on  the DH national group looking at managing student attrition during 2009.

I am currently exploring the impact of clinical placements  on student attrition and retention.

I have a wide range of teaching experience including simulation, e-learning and PBL and currently deliver around acute adult nursing as well as health care ethics across differnet professional groups.