I’m passionate about finding new and innovative ways to develop nursing as a profession and to ensure we deliver the best care for patients, families and our wider communities.
Rehabilitation is a good example. Nurses have such a vital role to play in helping patients get back to good health and fitness following serious injury or illness. Nursing practice spans acute, primary, long-term and social care settings, which means that nurses are ideally placed to work with patients and their families to establish and implement programmes of care. Nurses are skilled at building the relationships with patients that are so important to ensuring they feel supported through the physical, psychological and socio-economic challenges that a long path of rehabilitation presents.
There is scope, however, for nurses to play a leading role in the development and delivery of cutting edge research. Nurses can and should be at the centre of research and development in rehabilitation, and the new NHS National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) provides a very exciting opportunity for that to be realised.
The Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate near Loughborough will provide a great environment and setting, and the state-of-the-art advanced equipment and technology will be a massive boost for staff and patients. However, the research and development opportunities that the NRC will provide also excites me.
One of the key objectives for me in my role as Assistant Director of Nursing at NUH is to ensure we have a clear nursing excellence framework, underpinned by best available evidence. It’s about translating evidence into practice and ensuring education, training and clinical academic opportunities are core business for our profession.
The NRC also has similar ambitions to bring together health and education, and has formed the NRC Clinical & Academic Partnership (NCAP). NCAP is a consortium led by Nottingham and Loughborough Universities, and brings together other Universities across the country to create a network of experts in rehabilitation education to maximise innovation and collective knowledge.
COVID-19 and the emerging challenges posed by Long-COVID has highlighted the importance of effective rehabilitation post serious illness or injury, and the invaluable role nurses play in this. We can learn a lot from the pandemic response, and I believe now is a pivotal time for initiatives like NCAP to share research, lessons learned and best practice to improve how we provide rehabilitation, expand our knowledge and ultimately get better outcomes for patients.
At Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, our objectives reflect a desire to improve patient experience, clinical outcomes and staff experience. These are all inextricably linked and none of them can work in isolation. Staff experience supports better patient experience and better clinical outcomes. That’s why developing the confidence and leadership in research and development for the nursing profession is so important.
With its focus on innovation, research and development, I’m confident the NRC will be fantastic for nurses at NUH, for the wider Trust and our national partners. I’m thoroughly excited for the NRC and look forward to what’s to come.