Three nurses from Bury Care Organisation’s community services are celebrating after qualifying as Professional Nurse Advocates (PNA)
Karis Loftus from the Wound Care and Lymphoedema Service, Kate Hadfield from the Specialist Palliative Care Service and Claire Bilsborrow from the Continence and Stoma Service are the first nurses in Bury and across the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust to qualify.
This programme is the first of its kind for nursing not just in England, but across the world.
The Professional Nurse Advocate (PNA) programme delivers training and restorative supervision for colleagues right across England. The programme launched in March 2021, towards the end of the third wave of COVID-19. This was the start of a critical point of recovery: for patients, for services and for our workforce.
PNA training provides those on the programme with skills to facilitate restorative supervision to their colleagues and teams, in nursing and beyond.
The training equips them to listen and to understand challenges and demands of fellow colleagues, and to lead support and deliver quality improvement initiatives in response.
This role is supported by Wendy Parker, Assistant Director of Nursing for Adult Services. Wendy said:
“I am really proud of Claire, Karis and Kate. They are smart, bold and blazing a new trail across the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust to support their colleagues via a new model of restorative supervision. Bury Community services plans to enhance support to our staff by encouraging more nurses to become Professional Nurse Advocates in the future”.