Alison Warren

Alison joined the Department of Children and Young People’s health in July 2019 following a career in nursing spanning 37 years. She has both Child and Adult nursing qualifications. Prior to joining BCU she was the Clinical Matron for Children and Young People’s Services at The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (ROHNHSFT). She was in the role for nearly 3 years and it offered the exciting opportunity to influence all aspects of the patient journey, and develop a dynamic and credible children’s nursing team. It also offered a number of new and challenging experiences to add to her management, leadership and skills portfolio.

Due to the size of the hospital Alison was exposed to and participated in the more strategic elements of the NHS. She represented the Trust at external events and was involved in Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), West Midlands Quality Review Service (WMQRS), Care Quality Commission (CQC) visits and action planning. She also gained a good knowledge of NHS commissioning of services. These are transferable skills and can also help to inform nursing as a profession and the drivers that influence bedside care. 

In the Matron role Alison was the Lead Nurse for Resuscitation, which added to her skills set, particularly around adult resuscitation. This role included writing business plans for the procurement of new equipment Trust wide.

Also during this role Alison was recruited as a Health Education England Education (HEE) Fellow and worked alongside the Emergency Department (ED) staff in United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, to promote the safe care of infants, children and young people, following two ‘Inadequate’ Care Quality Commission (CQC) ratings. This secondment ran for 4 months and resulted in the HEE Fellow team being awarded an HEE Staff Recognition award.

In 2019 she was proud to be nominated for the Nurse of the Year Award and her CYP Team won the Clinical Achievement Award in the annual staff awards.

Throughout the ROH Matron role she maintained strong links with BCU and was passionate about the support of students in placement, CYP services were delighted to receive the Gold Leaf Placement of Excellence Award 2018. Alison also continued to deliver lectures, assessed OSCE’s and contributed to writing scenarios and the delivery of Community Challenge Simulation events at Safe side.

Alison worked at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital (BWCH) for 29 years and has a clinical background in Paediatric Intensive Care, Neurosciences, Hepatology and Liver Transplantation, Resuscitation services and Education and Learning. When she was working within the Education and Learning team she was seconded to BCU as a part time Lecturer Practitioner in clinical skills and simulation. Her role at BWCH included student support, the BCH Scholar programme, assisting with advancing skills nurse education and delivering Advanced Paediatric Life support as an APLS, EPALS and GIC Instructor. The advanced life support expertise has made her become increasingly more involved in clinical simulation as a learning media and she played a key role in the facilitation of 3 major incident simulations at BCU.

During 2014-15 Alison worked with a small project team for Health Education West Midlands on the “Every Student Counts” project and co-authored the “Mind the Gap- Exploring the needs of early career nurses and midwives in the workplace” report. She has also been involved in research into coma evaluation in children and published a number of articles and contributed to clinical nursing texts.

Alison has and is still participating in research activity with Doctor Andrea Page, their work around Clinical Holding has been presented at a number of forums and they have had a number of articles published.

Alison has a wealth of clinical, educational and academic expertise, in addition, she has up to date knowledge of working within the NHS. She I thrives on increasing her knowledge and skills and I cannot recall a day she hasn’t learnt something new or embraced a new challenge.