School of Health Sciences
 

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Katharine Whittingham

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences

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Biography

I qualified as a RGN in 1988 .I experience in a diverse range of community settings. I worked for 10 years as a Health Promotion Specialist influencing public health policy development, implementing and evaluating projects including the Nottingham Smoking Cessation service. My most recent clinical nursing post was working as a Specialist Heart Failure Nurse conducting comprehensive complex patient assessments and prescribing evidence based mediations.

I have had varied experience in developing, planning and delivering training to multi-agency groups including pre and post registered nurses . Examples of this include:

  • Helping People Change
  • Health Promotion Foundation Course
  • Drugs awareness

In April 2006 I was appointed as a BHF Heart Failure Nurse working within Nottingham City PCT. Key responsibilities of the role include:

  • Support and education of patients/carers in recognising clinical symptoms that indicate decompensation
  • Monitoring of clinical and psychosocial needs throughout disease trajectory
  • Development of management plans in conjunction with primary and secondary care to optimise treatment in partnership with patient/carers
  • Orchestrate packages of care in partnership with social services/welfare benefits service/voluntary sector to meet social care needs of patients/carer
  • Liaise with Heart Failure Specialist Nurse in secondary care to provide effective communication pathway throughout the disease trajectory
  • Facilitation of 'Preferred Place of Care' choices and 'Liverpool Care Pathway' in relation to end of life issues
  • Service development in conjunction with multi professional team including EMAS, pharmacy, GPs, District Nursing Service, Social Services, Secondary Care providers
  • Managing change in relation to role reconfiguration
  • Training health professionals and pre and post registered nurses in best practice relating to heart failure management
  • As an advanced nurse practitioner I am up to date with current national and local initiatives relating to CHD and Heart Failure and influence the implementation of these locally
  • Supporting pre registration student nurses during clinical placement with heart failure team

Expertise Summary

  • Experience of promoting of an integrated approach to case management and the management of long term conditions
  • Specialist Heart failure Nurse expertise in developing clinical guidelines, clinical assessment and prescribing evidence based medication. I represent the Royal College of Nursing as a reviewer for the development of a national Heart Failure Specialist nurse competency document. I am responsible for ensuring that the competencies reflect evidence based practice and meet the requirements for endorsement by the RCN. I am working alongside the Heart Failure Nurse Consultant from Imperial College to ensure the steering group has clarity regarding levels of the competences and the national/UK applicability. As an academic, I review the rigour in the process of the development of the competency document and ensure members of the steering group effectively gather and synthesise evidence and related existing work.Publication of the competency document is planned for 2021.
  • Palliative care guidance relating to management of end stage heart failure
  • Physical and psychosocial needs of carers for patients with heart failure
  • Wide range of experience of working a health care community based settings both in preventive interventions and proactive management of long term conditions
  • Health promotion and public health expertise with a focus on supporting behavioral change.Leadership of the BSc Health Promotion and Public Health programme proposed for September 2021
  • I am the nursing lead for 2 EU projects and we continue to progress the work. The project outputs are highly relevant in the current period as the projects focus on the development of apps and 360 technology for clinical nursing skills.The Digisim apps demonstrate 6 clinical skills and are available free from Google play for use on mobile devices. This information has been disseminated to undergraduate nursing students in all cohorts for e learning

  • I am a member of Public Health England Cardiovascular Prevention (CVD) Board working to ensure the contribution of nursing is recognised and embedded in policy and service development.

  • I am member of the Institute of Health Promotion and Education.

Teaching Summary

MSc Advanced Nursing Academic Plan Director. Lead the direction, oversight and overarching responsibility for the delivery, governance, curriculum and quality assurance of the course including… read more

Research Summary

I successfully completed my PhD in 2018 at the University of Sheffield, School of Associated Health and Research (ScHARR) I maintain collegiate scholarly activity with ScHARR focusing on carer issues… read more

Recent Publications

  • Coordination ( with colleague ) of Gedling PLT
  • BHF Heart Failure sponsorship
  • Attendance at national BHF conference annually
  • Attendance at Specialist Heart Failure Nurse Forums quarterly
  • Maintain clinical expertise in the management of Heart Failure patients through honorary contact with Community based Trust
  • Selections days for School of Health Sciences
  • Placement audits
  • Support coordination of widening participation events e.g. Taster days, School and College promotional events
  • Represent School on NUH Clinical procedures meetings quarterly

MSc Advanced Nursing Academic Plan Director. Lead the direction, oversight and overarching responsibility for the delivery, governance, curriculum and quality assurance of the course including marketing and recruitment, academic leadership, managing assessments, coordination of student liaison and feedback and a maintaining quality assurance.

FNC BSc Nursing. Coordinate teaching delivery from a wide range of lecturers and clinical practitioners utilising specialist expertise represented and implement innovative methods of teaching. Examples include creating care studies of patients with complex health and social care needs to illustrate the patient and carer journey and high quality e-learning resources for students to complete during self-directed study.

Module convenor MSc Dimensions of Advanced Nursing Module and module delivery Palliative and End of Life Care Management. Coordinate and deliver Module teaching, provide formative and summative feedback on Module assessment, ensure Module Moodle site is current and provide a range of teaching and learning resources in partnership with specialist clinicians.

Current Research

I successfully completed my PhD in 2018 at the University of Sheffield, School of Associated Health and Research (ScHARR) I maintain collegiate scholarly activity with ScHARR focusing on carer issues in the specialist area of heart failure. This has resulted in collaborative conference presentations at the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics for the European region in 2019; publication of a book chapter in International Handbook on Positive Ageing and an guest invitation to present at the Centre of Ageing Research, University of Lancaster.

Past Research

I have conducted an evaluation of support provided to carers by a Community based Heart Failure Specialist Nurse which has recently been published in the British Journal of Nursing (see publications).

Future Research

I am the nurse lead on 2 EU projects (see D4) within the Education and Technology for Health research group. The outputs from these projects are digital applications 'apps' and 360 digital technology. The applications use innovative teaching methods to deliver clinical skills to undergraduate nurses. 2019 nursing curriculum has an increased focus on clinical skills in a virtual environment and the projects have an impact on improving student clinical confidence. Focus groups to date demonstrate positive experience student experience of using the technology.

School of Health Sciences

B236, Medical School
Queen's Medical Centre
Nottingham, NG7 2HA

telephone: +44 (0)115 95 15559
email: mhssupport@nottingham.ac.uk