I have been very lucky to have had a fantastic career so far, spanning clinical areas, organisations, and countries. I qualified as a Registered Nurse in 1995 in Portsmouth and worked for a number of years in elderly medicine before packing my bags and traveling the world. During my travels I was able to work as a nurse in Australia. While my friends were earning meagre tips in bars I was developing my skills and being paid quite handsomely (for a traveller!)
On my return from that trip, I worked in Coronary Care before moving to St Louis, USA and working in Cardio Thoracic Intensive Care. It was here that I developed most, both clinically and within myself. I started to realise how strong my values are in respect to healthcare being accessible to all, doing no harm and, ultimately, how important the NHS is to me.
I returned to the UK to have my family, and took a few years off to care for them. Once they were all in nursery I struggled for a while to find my niche and after a couple of jobs in Cardiac Intensive Care and Haemodialysis I discovered Research Nursing.
This was a whole new world that resonated with me. A combination of patient care and advocacy, science and ultimately, service improvement. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to change the culture that surrounded Clinical Research and made it my mission for it to become Standard care in our clinical areas rather than be viewed as ‘something else’ for academic doctors to do. Never more so than during the pandemic when we were relying so heavily on the trials we were running to navigate through COVID19. I suspect that the best day of my career will always be the day we found out that the affordable, accessible drug dexamethasone improved mortality outcomes for in patients with acute COVID-19. We had worked so hard on the RECOVERY Trial and it had paid off: we had saved lives. (I cried!)
After 7 years of working as a Senior Research Nurse, delivering Clinical Research at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (C&V UHB), it was time to move on. In December 2021, I started my current role as Innovation Programme Manager for C&V UHB. Nursing was not an essential requirement for this role but I believe it brings so much. As nurses, we experience it all: the good and the bad. We reflect constantly and understand the complexities of patient care and pathways better than anyone.
As Innovation Programme Manager, it is my job to act as a bridge between all our staff from Estates to ITU, to listen to their ideas of what could improve our services, and to connect with the right expertise, science and technology to make this happen. My role links in with the wider innovation world including Welsh Government, The Life Science Hub, Universities, IP advisors, Governance, Procurement and a myriad of expertise in science and industry. It is a privilege to be able to facilitate these collaborations, signpost to relevant grants, and support projects through to implementation.
The challenge for the next six months is to become a more visible team. Currently our team consists of just myself and Mark Briggs, the Assistant Director of Innovation, alongside three amazing Innovation Fellows who are currently working on some incredible projects. We are working hard to define our processes and ensure that we can offer the robust support to our workforce in order to ensure that Cardiff and Vale UHB can develop and respond to the challenges ahead.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any ideas or projects that you would our support or advice with by emailing me: Zoe.hilton@wales.nhs.uk
