Alison has 37 years of clinical experience in nursing and the last 27 years as a clinical nurse specialist in tissue viability with Nottingham CityCare, providing advice and support to patients, carers and clinicians on all aspects of pressure ulcer prevention and optimisation of wound healing. She is actively involved in developing and delivering teaching packages and have been instrumental in the development of local policies and guidelines to ensure consistencies in tissue viability practices in line with national guidance and directives. Her additional role involves working with the University of Nottingham as a teaching associate developing accredited courses in tissue viability at degree and Masters level, and she has recently developed online courses encompassing wounds relating to impaired skin integrity and hard-to-heal wounds.
She completed a Masters programme in 2019 on Evidence for Health and Social Care where her interest in biofilm began to grow, with her dissertation appraising the most effective strategies for biofilm-based wound care in clinical practice, leading to the implementation of evidence-based guidance for the management of hard-to-heal wounds.
Angelique Denys
Homeless outreach nurse
Bevan Healthcare CIC
Angelique is a homeless outreach nurse working for a specialist GP in Yorkshire. She sees people in practice and on outreach who are rough-sleeping, vulnerably housed, and migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees. Her job allows her to reach one of the most vulnerable groups of people in society, who tend to have multiple complex needs encompassing physical/mental health issues as well as addiction problems. The care provided is holistic, taking a multidisciplinary approach working with other organisations/charities.
Cerys has worked within the field of wound care for 10 years, starting out in district nursing. This is where her passion for wound care was ignited and she gained a wealth of experience and skill in this role. She later moved on to practice nursing, running wound care clinics and assisting with a monthly vascular outpatients clinic. Wanting to specialise further and utilise the experience she already had, Cerys gained a position as a tissue viability specialist nurse at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where her particular interest in surgical site infections was born. The change from community and primary care to acute gave her further insight into a variety of complex wounds.
Cerys has been lucky enough to attend a variety of conferences, study days and courses within the field of tissue viability since specialising. She now leads the team at Hampshire Hospitals and helped develop and lead the service into a more holistic approach by being part of a wider team, The Fundamentals of Care Team, whose aim is to work collaboratively to optimise the inpatient experience, promote safety and prevent harm.
Studying Leadership and management in health at Masters level has helped her within her role — nursing leadership is something she wishes to further advance, and she is excited to start her Florence Nightingale Foundation Scholarship later this year.
Tissue Viability service improvement and development is where her passion lies with the aim of providing truly holistic care for patients.
Christine O'Connor
Independent consultant and transformational leader/coach
As a successful entrepreneur with 35 years’ experience in NHS reform, the successful externalisation of services to social enterprises, a previous active role in primary care and six years working as business and operations director with Accelerate CIC (Wound and Lymphoedema Care), Christine is well placed to take aspiring organisations into the emerging new world of an NHS which faces radical reform.
After following careers in education and sales and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, Christine set up her own business and for 30 years supported the development of change-based programmes to enable the delivery of NHS reform.
She holds dear her passion for wound and lymphoedema care and for general practice and believes that the answer to truly reconfiguring public engagement with the NHS sits in reengineered approaches to the business of primary and community care.
Christine shares her inspiring and motivational approach with her clients and enables them to believe in what is possible to achieve with focus and dedication. While she carries her title of independent consultant, she remains committed to supporting organisations in embracing principles of population health management, personalisation and the value of the digital world to aid the rebirth of an NHS fit for the 21st century.
Dianne Rudolph
Nurse practitioner
Wound Healing Partners and Wound Care 4 You, San Antonio, USA
Dr Dianne Rudolph, DNP, APRN, GNP-BC, CWOCN is a nurse practitioner board-certified in gerontological advanced practice nursing and as a wound, ostomy and continence nurse. She has been a nurse for more than 35 years with experience in trauma care, acute care, home care, hospice, long-term care, rehab and wound care. She is passionate about caring for adults and older adults with complex medical and wound needs. She has been a faculty member for several schools of nursing and is currently adjunct faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. She also works as a nurse expert witness for medicolegal issues. She has presented multiple lectures and published articles and book chapters on a variety of topics related to wound, ostomy and geriatric care issues. She is currently working for Wound Healing Partners, a practice which provides complex wound care for patients in a variety of settings. She is also the owner of Wound Care 4 You, an independent mobile wound care practice.
Emily Haworth
Clinical lead podiatrist
Swansea Bay University Health Board
Emily has over 17 years experience working in the acute sector as member of a multidisciplinary team within high risk/limb salvage in Ireland. She has a Masters degree in the high risk lower limb and postgraduate diplomas in positive health and podiatric sports podiatry.
She is co partner in Gael CPD, volunteer for rough sleeper lower limb clinic, part of the lecturing team for the International College of Podiatric Medicine (ICPM), teaching on the diabetic limb certificate for doctors in Pakistan.
She is currently clinical lead podiatrist in Swansea Bay, NHS in Wales.
Emily lectures nationally and internationally on her favourite topics, namely chronic disease and prevention and diabetic limb salvage.
Helen Shoker
Clinical Director
Wound Care Today
'As clinical director, I am delighted to support Wound Care Today, leading the development of the clinical programme and spending time with colleagues who are passionate about improving the life of those with, or at risk of, wounds. The blend of practical and theoretical sessions, personal development and real life experience will stimulate and inspire us all in our day-to-day practice.'
Remote area nursing in the Torres Straits Islands during the mid-1990s fired up Helen's passion for wound care. While there, she cared for locals with infected tropical wounds and many diabetic foot ulcers. On return to the UK, she actively pursued a career within tissue viability, and has had an enjoyable and rewarding career to date. She has held clinical, research and leadership positions within the NHS; and the tissue viability work her teams have undertaken has been recognised through three national awards.
Within wound care, she has worked as a lone TVN across a number of acute hospitals and has also lead tissue viability services. Having held both consultant tissue viability nurse and executive director of nursing roles within the NHS, and worked within the wound care industry, she now provides consultancy within the NHS, private sector and commercial organisations.
Helen holds a substantive position as lead nurse for wound care pathways within an NHS provider organisation in England, maintaining an active role in improving safety, patient and staff experience and clinical outcomes.
Jamie Waterall
Deputy chief public health nurse
Office for Health Improvement and Disparities
Professor Jamie Waterall is England’s deputy chief public health nurse at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, which forms part of the Department of Health and Social Care. As a senior civil servant, Jamie has been responsible for several governmental priority policy areas, including the Family Nurse Partnership, NHS Health Check and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention programmes. He also leads England’s All Our Health programme, which aims to increase the public health impact of all health and care professionals. Jamie holds honorary professorial positions at The University of Nottingham and The University of Hull and is also an editorial board member of the 'British Journal of Nursing'.
John McRobert
Clinical director
Pioneer Wound and Lymphoedema Centres
John is clinical director with Pioneer Wound and Lymphoedema Centres. He has worked in wound care for over 20 years, mainly specialising in major burn wounds, pressure injuries and acute wounds. He occasionally acts as an expert witness and writes defence medico-legal reports that help build defence cases against clinical negligence claims involving wound care and tissue viability.
Keeley Chapman
Tissue viability nurse
York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Keeley started her nursing journey by completing the degree in nursing sciences at Hull university in 1999. Her career began in community nursing, and she qualified as a district nurse following completing the specialist practitioner degree in 2004. She worked as a specialist nurse in palliative care before returning to district nursing in 2009. The role was enhanced by completing the practice teacher course to allow teaching and facilitating student district nurses.
For the past five years Keeley has been working as a specialist nurse in tissue viability and has recently undertaken the digital lead integrated into her current role.
Keith Harding
Emeritus professor
Cardiff University
Keith Harding is Emeritus professor at Cardiff University and an independent member, Cardiff & Vale University Health Board.
Laura Hay
Specialist nurse in tissue viability
Laura started in the NHS at Scarborough Hospital as a healthcare assistant in 2000 for 10 years and then underwent nurse training in 2010. She qualified in 2013 and worked as a surgical nurse at Scarborough Hospital. She was successful in obtaining a part-time secondment to the tissue viability team in January 2022 and became full-time mid-September 2022, working mainly in the acute inpatient setting.
Since being a student nurse, Laura has developed a keen interest in wounds — her main interest being in pressure ulceration.
Lauren Thorpe
Clinical nurse specialist in wound care
Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust
Lauren is a clinical nurse specialist for wound care in Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust. She has worked within the field of wound care for eight years and has a passion for wound care within the community setting. In 2015, Lauren was awarded the Novice Scholarship Award by Mölnlycke Health Care, which enabled her to achieve her BSc in wound care. She has worked within the community wound care service in a clinical leadership role, providing opportunity to instil passion into a large wound care team. Lauren is excited for the year ahead with the redesign of the patient pathways within Coventry. She has supported a redesigned workforce to deliver the right level of care for the patients wound care needs both in a clinic and community setting.
Layla Alshammari
PhD student
Queen's University Belfast
Layla Alshammari graduated in 2011 with a first-class honours degree in nursing from the University of Hail, Saudi Arabia, and continued to progress, graduating with a MSc in chronic disease at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In 2016, she graduated with a distinction in her dissertation.
She worked as a teaching assistant at the college of nursing at the University of Hail in Saudi Arabia for a year in 2012, and after graduating from her master’s degree, she was promoted to the rank of lecturer at the same university from 2016.
Layla Alshammari is in the final year of her PhD at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, supported by a full-time grant from the Ministry of Education, University of Hail, Saudi Arabia, and supervised by Professor Helen Noble, Dr Peter O'Halloran, Dr Oonagh McSorley, and Dr Julie Doherty. Her current project focuses on examining the suitability and feasibility of a nurse-led foot care educational intervention in patients with end-stage kidney disease receiving hemodialysis in Saudi Arabia.
Mandy Lelitte has worked for Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust for 17 years. She has spent that time exclusively within the national spinal injuries unit. She started her NHS journey as a band 2 healthcare assistant on one of the rehabilitation wards. After three years, she transferred to the spinal outpatient department, attained her NVQ3 certificate and then a band 3 position. It was during her time assisting in the outpatient complex wound clinics that she really developed an interest in wounds and wound care.
After many years of procrastinating, she applied to do a foundation degree in health and social care and at age 50 graduated with distinction. In September 2021, she was successful in her application for a one-year secondment to a band 4 tissue viability nursing assistant. The secondment has been extremely rewarding and she has currently been extended for a further six months, until March 2023.
In conjunction with this tissue viability role, she has used this secondment to pursue her personal passion for feet and to spread the word about basic foot care to both patients and staff. Mandy is looking forward to more opportunities to further improve the level of care and education within the unit, as well as reduce the numbers of trust-acquired pressure ulcers being reported on patients' feet.
Pam Cooper
Clinical partner
Pioneer Wound and Lymphoedema Centres/Pioneer Wound Telehealth
Pam Cooper has 32 years' experience working in the field of tissue viability. She initially worked as a nurse specialist in NHS Grampian, developing clinical services on a strong foundation of research. She has led the development and delivery of the wound debridement course at Birmingham City University. She held the post of clinical director for Wound Care Today and was responsible for the development of the programme for the annual conferences from 2018–2022. She is now the clinical partner for Pioneer Wound and Lymphoedema Centres/Pioneer Wound Telehealth.
Paul Vaughan
Deputy director — Primary Care Nursing and NextGen Nurse
NHS England
Paul works with NHS England as the deputy director – Primary Care Nursing and NextGen Nurse. Previously, Paul was a director of nursing, transformation within the organisation. Currently, the focus of his role is on general practice nursing and leading the national initiative on the perception of nursing known as NextGen Nurse.
Paul led the development and implementation of the 'GPN Ten Point Plan' and continues to work to ensure the voice and contribution of general practice nursing is valued and further developed in the new NHS system architecture.
The Getting to Equity programme, a component of NextGen Nurse, has been devised by Paul and Carol Cooper, director, Global Talent Compass. It provides an evidence-based framework that enables executive white leaders to promote the careers of aspiring ethnic minority nurse leaders and midwives to connect and build on existing talent that otherwise would have been missed, or may not have had the opportunity to grow into senior or executive NHS leadership positions. Paul also leads the NextGen schools work which encourages young people from all walks of life to take up nursing as their career of choice.
Paul has completed a Masters in Management with the University of Liverpool and his dissertation focused on the factors that enable nursing staff to raise concerns in their workplace.
Professor Jenni Macdonald
Nurse consultant tissue viability, Acute, Primary and Community Care
NHS Lothian
Jenni MacDonald is the nurse consultant tissue viability in NHS Lothian, Edinburgh responsible for acute, primary and community care. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Tissue Viability in 2011, Master of Science degree in Skin Integrity in 2017, Independent Prescribing in 2019 and has been heavily involved in several wound care publications.
Jenni has led tissue viability services in England and Scotland over the last decade and is the founder of TVN2gether. Graduating again in 2018, Jenni also holds a Darzi Fellowship, which is a prestigious, high profile programme designed to develop leaders to undertake complex change initiatives.
She is passionate about quality improvement and believes that empowering and strengthening the tissue viability specialist nurse workforce is key to achieving high quality wound care services. Jenni is excited to build on this mission via her appointment as Professor at Brimingham City University in 2021 to support the delivery of a brand new Masters degree in wound healing and tissue repair.
Rachel Mullins
Perinatal pelvic health midwife; honorary clinical research fellow with the South West Clinical School in Cornwall
Royal Cornwall Hospital
Rachel studied at Bournemouth University and returned home to be a midwife in Cornwall & Isles of Scilly in 2016. She has experience across all areas of maternity working in acute, community and midwife-led birth centre settings. Rachel has a particular interest in perineal trauma prevention, repair and aftercare. She is actively involved in research and training in this field and her current role as specialist perinatal pelvic health midwife has enabled wider collaboration with obstetric, midwifery and physiotherapy colleagues, NHS England and service user groups to establish a perinatal pelvic health service for the South West.
Sarah Furness
Sarah Furness is an ex RAF combat helicopter pilot and squadron leader, mindfulness coach, human
Siobhan Mccoulough
Lead tissue viability nurse, University Hospital Plymouth
Siobhan has worked in the community for 20 years across North and South West London until relocating to the South West and moving to the acute sector as lead TVN at University Hospital Plymouth. She started researching prevention of pressure ulcers in the community and long-term care settings in 2012, leading to become a pressure ulcer prevention project lead in 2014.
Launching the ‘everyone’s business’ campaign in 2015, Siobhan worked extensively across the multidisciplinary teams in both home, and hospital, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and local authorities, raising awareness in training all disciplines in how to identify non-blanching erythema.
‘I have been honoured to win both quality improvement awards at EPUAP and to be nominated to attend a Royal Garden Party by Ruth May, Director of Nursing at NHS Improvement, in recognition of my work’. Working in London, Siobhan found that the patient demographic was largely of Asian descent, with brown and black skin. The issue of teaching ‘react to red’ became apparent. This has led her to be an advocate and ally to clinical diversity networks in raising awareness of skin conditions in non-Caucasian skin tones — to identify debate and practical skills to empower clinicians to raise awareness and deliver training on this subject.
Victoria Graham
Lecturer
Wrexham Glyndwr University
Vic (Victoria) Graham joined Wrexham Glyndŵr University in Feb 2016 on retirement as a Lieutenant Commander in the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. In her 23 years’ service, she completed her adult nurse training and worked on various wards, specialising in breast cancer care and oncology. Eventually she moved into education and became a nurse lecturer, working at both Portsmouth and Birmingham City Universities. In 2007, she commissioned as a naval officer and trained as a burns and plastic surgery nurse, working in Birmingham with the Military Polytrauma Team, helping to nurse and ‘re-build’ the service personnel returning with profound injuries from Afghanistan. She completed a six-month tour to establish the full-time burns and plastic surgery nurse role (as well as pain nurse) at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, for which she received a Queens Commendation for Valuable Service. More recently, she moved to the Welsh borders and back to working in education and was delighted to join the nurse education team at Wrexham Glyndŵr University, with a keen eye to use her experiences to develop innovative teaching programmes. She is currently the programme leader for the MSc professional Practice in Health and also leads the interprofessional module ‘Principles of Wound Care’.
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