Nottingham nurse wins US scholarship

Published: 16 August 2012

A Nottingham RCN member has been awarded a prestigious scholarship to learn more about health care in the USA.

Nurse Laura Hailes, 25, who works in Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust’s City Hospital Oncology and Radiotherapy department, will be an ambassador on the Nottinghamshire Roosevelt Travelling Scholarship, which gives 21-30 year olds who live or work in the county the chance to travel to the US to develop their professional expertise.

She will be travelling across the USA in late-September for three months with the other scholarship recipient, Occupational Therapist Becky Williamson. The trip will include visits to Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, where they will develop their ideas and talk to other health care professionals about best practice.

Laura’s goal is to champion and learn more about ‘Shared Governance’ to improve communication in hospital wards. She explains: “Shared Governance is about empowering staff by changing the existing work culture, so that frontline staff work more closely with their managers. This will give staff more power to make decisions that affect their practice.”

She added: “We don’t use the Shared Governance approach yet but I am hoping to pilot it on my return to work because studies have shown that it improves patient outcome and increases staff empowerment and satisfaction.”