Meet the team

Please find details below of your Fertility Nursing Forum steering committee members:

Debbie Barber- Forum Chair

Biography coming soon

Christine Eftekhar- Deputy Chair, Forum Newsletter Editor

My chosen career pathway has been Woman’s Health and I have held senior posts since 1984, including Sister on a surgical ward in Liverpool. I worked in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia for a couple of years in woman’s Health and as an Outpatients Manager at a London Clinic managing clinics for gynaecology, surgical sister lupus, breast screening and fertility.

I have worked in the field of Reproductive Medicine for more than 22 years and have worked with some of the top professionals in some of the most prestigious IVF centres in the UK. This has given me the knowledge and skills to successfully manage an IVF Unit.  I also have experience working with quality management systems and with the HFEA and care quality compliance.

I work for IVF Hammersmith and I am responsible for overseeing all patient treatment cycles through 92 Harley Street and co-ordinating patient care. I thoroughly enjoy my work and find it very rewarding.  I am currently involved at present in the commissioning and setting up of a new IVF clinic in Central London.

I have been a member of the RCN Fertility Nursing Committee for a number of years now and have been the Newsletter Editor for the past four years.  I am currently the Deputy Chair of the Forum.

I represent the RCN at the Professional Stakeholders meeting at the HFEA and I am an active member of the Senior Infertility Nurses Group (SING).

I believe in promoting a safe professional relaxed and supportive environment for patients and staff.

Rebecca Goulding- RGN, BA (Hons)

I am the Senior Fertility Sister at the Assisted Conception Unit, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust where I have been in post since 2004.  I have a specialist interest in the management of couples with blood born viruses requiring fertility treatment using risk reduction techniques such as sperm washing.

I am an active member of the Senior Infertility Nurses group and a British Fertility Society member.
 
I am very pleased to have been appointed to the RCN Fertility Nursing Forum Steering Committee in October 2011 and being given the opportunity to contribute to an already active and exciting forum.

Yvonne Doonan

I joined the Fertility Nursing Forum Steering Committee at the end of 2010 to get involved in policy and practice in my specialist field of fertility within the robust structure of the RCN.

I currently work as a Fertility Sister at the Shropshire and Mid Wales Fertility Unit in Shrewsbury, Shropshire where I have been since 1998. When I joined the team we did satellite IVF in little more than a “hut” with two nurses, two scientists, two clinicians and a secretary! Having moved to adapted premises in 2000 we have a fully functioning IVF unit with thirty odd staff and we’re still fighting for space! I’m sure we are no different to many other units.

Apart from the normal everyday responsibilities of nursing in a fertility unit, I have implemented and still co-ordinate the egg donation/share programme for the unit since 2006. I represent the RCN at the DH on a select committee for the National Gamete Donation Trust which is a charitable organisation you will be aware of.

Prior to my current post I was a midwife having worked in eight midwifery units around the country, courtesy of a husbands RAF career! These posts were all very different, challenging and wonderful. I managed to combine the two roles of fertility sister/midwife for a number of years which was the best job ever! However, an ever expanding fertility unit demanded more and more of my time and I found it hard to maintain both parts of the register to keep my registration. I therefore decided to forgo my midwifery work.

Before my midwifery training in York I was a staff nurse in oncology for a brief spell in Edinburgh where I also did my general nurse training at the Western General Hospital.

So my professional life has taken me from the grave to birth and onwards to the creation of life. It’s a shame I don’t get any younger doing this job!

Karen Ralph

I have worked as a Specialist Fertility Nurse now for 17 years, first as the lead nurse in a satellite centre and now as the Fertility Services Manager at the Complete Fertility Centre in Southampton, a rapidly developing new centre working in partnership with the NHS Trust and Southampton University. I have a particular interest in IUI development alongside other assisted treatments.

I have a background as a nurse in Accident and Emergency Care and as a Midwife, working in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia.

I have been affiliated to the RCN Fertility Nursing forum for several years, assisting this highly motivated team of nurses who are passionate about supporting and developing Fertility Nurses and their role. I am now proud to have become a full member of the Forum Committee.

Pauline Barrett

Biography coming soon

Carmel Bagness- RCN Midwifery and Women's Health Adviser

Carmel is a registered nurse, practicing midwife and midwifery educationalist and has considerable expertise in midwifery education, and a background in midwifery and women’s reproductive health ethics. 

She worked for Thames Valley University (TVU) as a senior lecturer, where she was involved in the creation of an innovative problem and enquiry based learning curriculum developed for both 78 week and three year midwifery pre registration programmes.

In 2002, she became Lead Midwife for Education at TVU, where she was responsible for a creative team of midwifery lecturers, who progressed midwifery education, scholarship and practice from pre-registration through to post graduate masters programmes.

In 2008, she took on the role of Associate Dean: Quality, Teaching, Learning and Assessment. Then in September 2009, she was seconded to the Department of Health’s Midwifery 2020 programme as Stakeholder Engagement Lead.

Midwifery 2020 was the government’s key programme of work around developing an informed vision of the contribution midwives will make to achieving quality, cost-effective maternity services for women, babies and families across the United Kingdom. During this time she was also on the steering group who produced the Department of Health’s position statement on advanced level nursing. 

In 2011 she joined the RCN as Midwifery and Women’s Health Adviser. She has particular interests in reproductive and women’s health ethics, managing change, workforce management and creating effective environments to move forward practice and education for midwives and nurses.

Carmel said...

The Midwifery and Women’s Health Adviser role is about influencing and developing UK-wide health and social care policy and practice, in both midwifery and the full range of women’s health.

I plan to do this by making the best use of the expertise of RCN members and relevant professional, public and client/patient networks. 

A key philosophy underpinning this, in particular, when influencing and shaping policy will be around celebrating good practice, while enhancing the need to have shared responsibility for challenging poor practice. 

My role includes acting as a resource and conduit for responding to proposals and working groups across the health care provision at both strategic commissioning and operational levels of practice. This includes recognising the need to work within the constraints of contemporary health care provision, while expanding the evidence base to provide high quality cost effective care.

Channelling the knowledge explosion around us to make best use of available evidence, while creating opportunities for professionals to discuss contemporary practice, not just at national level, but also taking account of what we can learn from international health care provision, and how we can contribute to the global health care requirements of the 21st century.

Part of my role will be about supporting and facilitating the work for the Midwifery, Fertility Nursing and the Women’s Health Forums. Initially, this will be about enhancing understanding of how we work together to deliver current projects.

I am looking forward to actively engaging with the membership of the forums and exploring how we maximise influence over the future of health and social care.

Moving and influencing policy across the diverse range of women’s health care and the challenges also faced in maternity services are critical, while the privilege of this role will be the opportunities to work with, and beyond the RCN community.