Nominated for Nursing Role Model of the Year Award
Works at Torbay & South Devon NHS Foundation Trust
Abbie is leading the Paediatric Epilepsy Specialist Nursing Service to new heights with her forward thinking QI projects and drive to succeed for her patients. Abbie always has an empathetic approach and delivers the gold standard in her nursing care. She shares her wide knowledge base and is supportive to all her colleagues and the multidisciplinary team.
Abbie is an asset to our paediatric epilepsy nursing team. She has changed the direction and the face of the service since been appointed in this role. She is able to embrace the challenges of supporting a family with new and existing diagnoses of epilepsy not only by offering advice in a professional capacity, but also by being compassionate, listening and alleviating their worries, and literally being there with them, if needed in her own time.
Apart from delivering exceptional nursing clinical support, Abbie’s commitment also extends to ongoing learning and professional development, which helps her to provide a better quality of care in the constantly evolving world of healthcare. She attends tertiary outreach clinics, regional meetings, supports nursing students, is an excellent peer mentor and is now completing the accreditation of a nurse prescriber.
All this alone would not have given me the reason to nominate her for the nursing role model, till I received a patient feedback from a parent commenting on how exceptional Abbie had been during the initial few weeks of a 6 year old with a new diagnosis of medically challenging epilepsy. Abbie have been in regular elective contact with them and returned all ad-hoc calls made by the family during medication changeovers with attention to detail and flagged them appropriately to the clinicians Improving outcomes in which the family had been very thankful about.
In all her positivity, adaptiveness, advocacy and calm inspiring presence not only makes a difference for the patients but also to clinicians and other staff members during busy and stressful situations at all times.
PAFTAs 