Rachel Hollis FRCN - Chair
Member for Yorkshire and the Humber, January 2018 - December 2021
Rachel Hollis is Honorary Nurse Advisor for Children’s Cancer in the Leeds Children’s Hospital at the Leeds Hospitals NHS Trust.
Rachel trained as a Registered General Nurse at St Mary’s Hospital in London. After a short time consolidating her general training there as a Staff Nurse on a general adult medical ward, she returned to her home county of Yorkshire. She went first to Scarborough, and a general children’s ward, in order to test out her intention to move into children’s health care. She went on to train as a Registered Children’s Nurse in Leeds and remained there for the rest of her professional working life as a children’s cancer nurse.
Rachel played an active role in the development of children’s cancer nursing, and children’s cancer services, at the national level in the UK. She represented the RCN on the Guidance Development Group for the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ‘Guidance on Improving Outcomes in Children and Young People with Cancer’ (2005). She went on to become a member of the Advisory Group on the implementation of this guidance at the Department of Health, and subsequently the NHS England Clinical Reference Group for Children and Teenage Cancer.
Rachel is a past Chair of the RCN Paediatric Oncology Nurses Forum and a former Steering Group member of the Children and Young People’s Specialist Care Forum. In this role she has taken a broader role in the development of children’s nursing and health care. She was the lead author of RCN guidance on ‘Specialist and Advanced Practice in Children and Young People’s Nursing’. She was made a Fellow of the RCN in recognition of her contribution to the nursing of children with cancer.
Rachel has a particular interest in international health care and is a member of the nursing group within the International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP). She is a former Chair of the SIOP Paediatric Oncology in Developing Countries (PODC) Nursing Working Group. In that capacity she has advocated for and worked with nurses from Low and Middle Income Countries in looking to define base-line standards for the nursing care of children with cancer which have been endorsed by the RCN. She has recently become a Trustee of ‘World Child Cancer’, a charity which works to support twinning programmes and capacity building in a number of low and middle income countries. Rachel and the team in Leeds are actively involved in supporting a children’s cancer programme in North West Cameroon.
Rachel is also a Trustee of CLICSargent, the UK’s largest charity supporting the families of children with cancer, and lobbying for improved services nationally.
Outside of work Rachel enjoys travel and walking; ideally combining the two. She is lucky to have the Yorkshire Dales and Moors on her doorstep, and is not too far from the Lake District and Scotland. Further afield she has spent time walking in Europe and in Africa; she has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice!
PNC.YorksandHumber@rcn.org.uk