Why I value my time as a trustee
Having been a Trustee with BAUN through the difficult times of Covid I needed a bit of a break to refocus and put my work and family as a priority. I am delighted to have been asked to come back as seeing what goes on in the day-to-day running was really helpful. Some of the skills picked up as a trustee are transferable into the ‘day job’, and the other Trustees are welcoming and supportive.
My interest is particularly education and sharing best practice, so previously helping to organise the two virtual conferences and several of the webinars was a great opportunity for me.
Why I have a passion for urology
To be truthful I never planned to become a urology nurse, I hadn’t done any urology during my training. When I moved back to Cornwall, jobs were scarce and the only job was on a male elective urology ward, that was back in 1991! I loved the mix of complex and simple cases, and the opportunities for nurse led initiatives, from catheterisations to LATP, from flow clinics to intravesical treatments and demystifying nephrostomies.
Twenty years ago I had the opportunity to become a uro-oncology clinical nurse specialist, this was a game changer for me and enabled me to develop further. I take great pleasure in helping patients understand their treatments, helping with decision making, being there as a source of support and information as well as running nurse led clinics and delivering education and support to colleagues.
Biography
Debbie started in urology in June 1991, and went through to Ward Manager level, but decided she preferred more patient contact, so became a uro-oncology clinical nurse specialist at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust in 2004. Being a CNS legitimately gave her more time with the patients, helping them to understand their diagnosis and help with decision making.
Over the last 20 years she has introduced supported self-management for men who have had treatment with curative intent, or those with stable disease on active surveillance or on hormone manipulation; initially trained to perform TRUS biopsies in 2007 but in 2020 introduced a nurse led LATP clinic. She is also a non-medical prescriber and runs a nurse led clinic for men on androgen depravation tablets both for the castrate sensitive and castrate resistant metastatic and non-metastatic disease patients. In 2020 she became an oncology only based CNS so is no longer involved in the surgical pathway for patients.
In 2019 she was the BJN Urology Nurse of the Year and in 2021 she won the TUF/BAUN Urology Nurse of the Year. She has recently been a Prostate Cancer UK Champion, her project being to improve the links between the practice nurses administering hormone manipulation and secondary care in an attempt to reduce the hormone manipulation side effect burden. As a follow on from this she has set up a ‘Healthy on Hormones’ workshop for men on androgen deprivation therapy. She is also the clinical advisor for the prostate cancer pathway on the MySunrise Cancer Companion App.
She has been a member of BAUN for a long time, she found the expertise from the conference and educational opportunities, plus the networking, invaluable as a someone working in relative isolation back when she first joined. She was secretary for the BAUN Section of Oncology for several years, but then this was absorbed into the board of Trustees.
She was a Trustee in 2018-2021 and is happy to have been asked to join again. She looks forward to serving our community of urology nurses.