Since starting her career with the Trust as a student nurse 15 years ago, Katharine – known as Kat to her colleagues - has worked across a number of the Trust’s mental health services, including as a Staff Nurse and Deputy Ward Manager in Eating Disorders, a Community Psychiatric Nurse in the Mother and Baby Unit and a Ward Manager in a young people’s acute ward. More recently she has been working to support adults and teenagers with serious and complex mental illness in the Trust’s secure care facilities.
Whatever role she is in, Katharine puts the care and wellbeing of service users at the heart of everything she does. This includes leading local initiatives such as setting up groups to ensure service users, their families and carers are fully involved and are encouraged to participate in care plans and the running of the ward.
She was nominated for her MBE following our Quality and Excellence Awards in 2017, when she won the Compassion in Quality category having received multiple nominations from her colleagues.
Sue Hartley, Executive Director of Nursing at the Trust, said:
“Kat embodies all that is great about the nursing profession and demonstrates the ‘6Cs’ of nursing – care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment - in everything she does. We are so proud of her and she truly deserves this award. For those just starting out in nursing, or thinking of joining the profession, seeing such a positive role model from the frontline of nursing being recognised in this way for her outstanding work is really inspiring. With people like Kat around, the nursing profession is in safe hands for many years to come.”
