Karen is a highly experienced Advanced Clinical Practitioner and Non Medical prescriber with extensive experience in primary care settings. She qualified as a Registered Nurse at the University of Chester in 1997 and has recently returned to the University joining the Non-medical Prescribing and Advanced Clinical Practice team. Karen has spent the last 14 years working within General Practice and Primary Care and the last 6 years within Senior Leadership roles in this setting.
During Covid Karen was part of the team providing Primary Health care to the repatriated passengers off the Covid stricken cruise ship while they were in quarantine on Wirral, she further worked alongside IPC teams providing Covid swabbing out of a mobile unit during the first weeks of the Covid pandemic. Following this she delivered Covid swab training to care home staff remotely enabling them to safely test their patients while keeping the footfall into the care homes as low as possible.
More recently while working as an ACP Karen took on the role of Lead Nurse for a PCN which then led to her being voted as Clinical Director for the PCN, a role usually taken up by GPs and being one of only twenty-five non-medical CDs out of 1250 PCNs. This developed Karen’s Leadership skills and combined with the enjoyment gained from successfully supporting a wide variation of students in Practice increased her focus on the importance of the Nurse and allied Health Care Professionals within the Healthcare field driving her towards lecturing.
Karen continues to retain her clinical authenticity by working a day a week in clinical practice within GP and UTC settings and working remotely providing high level ACP care for 111 and out of hours patients.