RCN Fellowships

RCN Fellowships are awarded to UK registered nurses who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of nursing and/or health care. Their expertise has supported the work and aims of the RCN.

This year Fellowships were awarded to Neil Carr and Janet Marsden.

Neil Carr

A pioneer of mental health prescribing in England, Neil Carr has demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities throughout his career. His work has helped ensure that mental health and learning disability nurses are significant and key professionals in the management of mental health service patients.

He has successfully taken values learned in nursing to the post of chief executive of South Staffordshire and Shropshire Health Care NHS Foundation Trust, which is a provider of mental health care, long-term physical disability care, community paediatric and learning disability services. The trust is a strong, highly regarded organisation, recognised by Monitor as a top performer and brand leader.

Neil was prepared to break new ground in his determination to achieve mental health prescribing. He collaborated with American colleagues from Yale and Denver universities who then came to the UK to work with him on developing a programme for mental health and learning disability prescribing.

Between 2002 and 2006, he attended and spoke at many conferences, challenging the views of those unconvinced by nurse prescribing. He organised and championed six annual national conferences, collaborating with Professor Peter Nolan and Dr Eleanor Bradley to capture and disseminate the findings around the country. More recently, his leadership and vision facilitated the trust’s decision to collaborate and contract with the Ministry of Defence to deliver the best in-patient care to serving men and women. He was responsible for building a network of trusts so that service personnel could be admitted at a reasonable distance from their home or employment. A clinical network is now established where NHS and military personnel come together to advance evidence-based care.

Neil, who was awarded the OBE in 2005 for services to health care and nursing, has developed good relationships with many educational institutions and especially with Staffordshire University, where he has established two professors in joint posts with the trust.

Janet Marsden

Rising from staff nurse to become Professor of Ophthalmology and Emergency Care at Manchester Metropolitan University is just one measure of Janet Marsden’s substantial achievements over the last 20 years. She is considered to be among the leading nurses in her field internationally and her ceaseless drive has moved ophthalmic nursing care into the 21st century.

During her time as chair of the RCN’s Ophthalmic Forum, she led work on ophthalmic nursing competences which have since been adopted in several countries, including Australia and New Zealand. They also inform staff development in the St John’s Eye Hospital, Jerusalem, where she has visited the hospital to evaluate the care and management of patients, and also outreach clinics in Ramallah and Jericho on the West Bank.

Throughout her career, she has continually aimed to improve understanding of the need to correctly assess emergency eye patients. In particular, her work on triage in emergency care has helped end the confusion between conjunctivitis and uveitis, which is a sight threatening condition. She has been instrumental in implementing the Manchester triage system in emergency departments worldwide.

Janet has published extensively on ophthalmic nursing and delivered keynote addresses to many international conferences. In New Zealand, her Ophthalmic Care is the core text for the special topic paper within the Masters of Nursing Programme.

Much in demand as a member of expert groups, she is a core member of the Research Institute for Health and Social Change. Most recently she led the development of a publication on continuing professional development in health and social care for the RCN. The position statement and lobbying document has been endorsed by a large number of professional organisations and trade unions. Not surprisingly, Janet was recently included in the Nursing Times list of the top 20 most influential nurses since the inception of the NHS.