Cathy Poole

Cathy started her career in nursing in January 1980 and completed adult nurse training. She always knew however, that she wanted to be a children’s nurse having done nursery nurse training (NNEB) at college so pursued this career choice.

After completing her children’s nurse training, Cathy worked as a registered children’s nurse at Birmingham Children’s Hospital on the infectious diseases ward. This allowed her to hone her paediatric nursing skills and knowledge. This ward also specialised in dermatology where Cathy learnt to appreciate how hard it is for children and families to deal with severe dermatological conditions.

Cathy's next career move was to a district general hospital where she took up a Sisters role on an 18 bed paediatric ward, which specialised in cystic fibrosis. This was a busy environment which further strengthened her clinical knowledge and skills and began to shape her management/leadership style.

After about 4 years, Cathy was fortunate to return to the infectious diseases ward at Birmingham Children’s Hospital as a ward sister. By now children’s renal services had moved from Heartlands Hospital to Birmingham Children’s Hospital and this became the catalyst for Cathy's area of interest – renal nursing. By 1992 Cathy's interest in renal nursing gave her the opportunity to become an early diagnosis sister with the renal team. This role was funded through Health of the Nation and required her to work very closely with children who had recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI) and high risk renal tracts. Cathy learnt to perform urine microscopy and provided a rapid UTI diagnosis service for these children. It was during this role that she was awarded a commendation in the child health category 1995 nurse of the year awards for the development of an early diagnosis service for children with high-risk renal tracts. This was very exciting and gave Cathy the opportunity to use her award money to travel to Sydney, Australia to undertake a presentation at the international children’s continence symposium and visit the new children’s hospital in Sydney.

By 1998 Cathy had been instrumental in the development and NMC validation of a paediatric renal course which was a collaboration between Birmingham Children’s Hospital and the then University of Central England (now Birmingham City University). It was quickly identified that there was a gap between the theory and practice for this course and the first paediatric lecturer practitioner post in the West Midlands was developed. This job was clearly perfect for Cathy, which she was lucky enough to be appointed into and this now gave her the platform to teach her area of expertise to paediatric nurses attending the course as well as working with students and qualified children’s nurses on the renal unit at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.   

Whilst working as a Lecturer Practitioner Cathy had the opportunity to work with Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) -  the world’s largest dialysis company. In partnership with FMC, they successfully developed and had accredited two level 4 renal modules the target audience being registered nurses working for FMC in specialist satellite haemodialysis units across the UK.

By 2002, Cathy found herself becoming the Training and Education Manager for Fresenius Medical Care UK, taking responsibility for all staff training within their many satellite haemodialysis units across the UK. It also gave her the opportunity to revalidate the level 4 renal modules and add in a level 5 management module. Throughout this time, Cathy maintained her paediatric competence through bank work at Acorns Children’s Hospice in Worcester.

Seven years later, Cathy applied for and was successful in becoming a Senior Lecturer in Child Health and the Admissions Tutor for the pre-registration children’s nursing course. This gave me the chance to work with undergraduate students, understand and navigate the complexities of the UCAS application process and develop a virtual case to add to the universities portfolio of virtual cases via virtual case creator (VCC). The virtual case she developed was a paediatric surgical case designed to follow the patient journey for the assessment of acute appendicitis and to gain an insight into the principles underpinning surgical care and management for children.  

By 2009, Cathy was drawn back to Fresenius Medical Care and to renal nursing once more as the training and education manager. Whilst in this position she had the opportunity to work at the company headquarters in Bad Homburg, Germany with the education team for 6 months. During the last 12 months in this role Cathy was instrumental in reviewing and introducing a variety of apprenticeships within the business and haemodialysis satellite units as well as securing sponsorship for dialysis assistants to undertake their nurse training. However, following internal reorganisation and a change in managerial direction Cathy took the opportunity to reflect on her next steps and realised that she wanted to be back within an academic institution. At the same time as she was considering returning to a higher education institution, and Birmingham City University were advertising for a Senior Lecturer to join the FdSc Nursing Associate (Higher Apprenticeship) academic team. This seemed to be Cathy's perfect next step and she was successful in her application and asked to take up the Course Lead role.

During her career, Cathy has been an external examiner for an adult renal course and a paediatric high dependency module delivered by Cardiff University. She has also been an external examiner for the BSc nursing course for Brighton University.

Cathy is passionate about sharing good practice and has had the pleasure of presenting at local, national and international conferences as well as successfully writing for publication. She has encouraged many of her colleagues to submit abstracts for the European Dialysis and Transplant Nurses Association. All of the abstracts were accepted and included poster presentations as well as plenary sessions.  

In 2018 with colleagues, Cathy was included in the Fresenius Medical Care award for participation the review of 13 vascular access e-Learning modules and for review/edit of a CVC (Central Venous Catheter) access booklet - Parisotto, MT. (2018) Vascular Access Management and Care – A Nursing Best Practice Guide for Central Venous Catheter. EDTNA/ERCA: Switzerland.