Reverend Tom Keighley
Reverend Tom Keighley is an inspirational nurse leader whose main interests are the politics of health care and the challenge of change.
Tom’s early nursing career ensured he gained a wide range of experience in clinical practice and teaching. Working at Whittingham Hospital in the period following a major enquiry, he experienced how an institution responds to such an event. Later, he was appointed at Papworth Hospital, just as the heart transplant programme started. He was elected as Honorary Secretary of the RCN Research Society, following initial work to try and establish a research base for nursing practice.
Tom later worked as adviser to the RCN Research Society. He also led for the RCN on Information and Computing as the Körner Committee did its work and NHS Performance Indicators were being developed. He undertook the background work, which led to the appointment of the Adviser on Standards of Nursing and led on work in the field of nursing ethics.
From 1986 to 1990 he worked in Waltham Forest Health Authority, to two district general managers: Christine Hancock and Trevor Jones. After this, he was appointed Regional Director of Nursing and Quality at Yorkshire Health. This role focused on addressing the practice and education of nurses, to give leadership to the mass of quality initiatives in the region, to determine new strategies to address the issues of race and palliative care, and to provide appropriate nursing inputs to the region’s policy formulation.
Becoming a non-executive director at St Gemma's Hospice and taking over the editorship of the most widely read nursing management journal in Europe gave Tom a degree of concreteness not always present in his day-to-day work.
Having established the Institute of Nursing and helped to integrate the Leeds College into the University of Leeds as the School of Healthcare Studies, Tom was asked to take on a new role as Director of International Development. He extended opportunities to study abroad in Europe and the Americas, established a wide range of contacts for colleagues in their subject areas, was involved in a number of governmental exercises overseas and managed a number of international initiatives.
In 2001 Tom established Tom Keighley Associates and began work as an independent health care consultant. During this time his skills have been sought by a number of organisations, including the Lincoln Theological Institute, and a number of NHS organisations.
Tom feels privileged to have been involved in so many different fields of professional practice during his nursing career. He was greatly inspired by working directly with Trevor Clay and Christine Hancock. His personal vision for the future of nursing is of a profession that attracts the very best to care for the least able.
Tom lives in the Yorkshire Dales.
Publications
Tom was the editor of Nursing Management from 1996 to 2004. He has also been a prolific writer; here are just a few examples of his numerous publications:
- A chapter in Tadd and Win’s Ethical and Professional Issues in Nursing: Perspectives From Europe (2003)
- A chapter in Hennessy and Spurgeon’s Health Policy and Nursing: Influence, development and Impact (2000)
- A chapter in Hinchliff et al’s Nursing Practice and Health Care (1998)
- A chapter in Mayer et al’s Quality Care for Elderly People (1997)
- A chapter in Wade and Waters’ A Textbook of Gerontological Nursing: Perspectives on Practice (1996)
- A woman of mystery: A reflection on the spiritual side of Florence Nightingale, Nursing Standard (1999)
- A privilege not a right: professional self-regulation, Nursing Standard (1997)