9th National Gastrointestinal Nursing Conference

Gerri Mortimore is a Registered General Nurse with over 37 years’ experience, spanning both acute medical and surgical nursing within the UK and abroad. This has given her unique perspective which can be applied to various settings. For the last 3 years she has worked in an academic role as a Post Graduate lecturer in Advanced Practice, teaching advanced practice skills to allied health professionals. Prior to this, Gerri worked as the Lead Clinical Nurses Specialist in Hepatology and set up nurse led clinics in alcohol/fatty liver/autoimmune liver disease/viral hepatitis and Haemochromatosis. In addition, she organised surveillance for all cirrhotic liver patients, in line with NICE Guidance and set up a nurse led paracentesis service. She was also actively involved in medical, nursing and allied professional health teaching as well as audit and research. This expert knowledge in liver disease, has enabled Gerri to publish widely in many nursing, prescribing and medical journals. In addition, she has a National profile and has been involved in writing Quality Standards and NICE Guidelines. Gerri is now Undertaking her PhD.

Jennie has worked in St Mark’s hospital for over 20 year and in colorectal nursing for longer than that. Jennie has experience in stoma care, research, enhanced recovery after colorectal surgery and is now working in post graduate nurse education. She has recently set up a BSc in gastrointestinal care and hopes to also run this at masters level. Jennie enjoys writing and has been involved in multiple journal publications, book chapters and book editing. Jennie has a degree and masters in gastrointestinal nursing and is currently undertaking a PhD, looking into anterior resection syndrome. Jennie's Twitter: @jenburch24

Lesley qualified as a general nurse in 1984, and as a Sick Children’s Nurse in 1986. After several years in clinical practice during which time she completed her BSc, she pursued initially an academic career – gaining her MPhil – and later turning her attention to becoming a fulltime researcher. In a serendipitous turn, she secured a post with Professor Christine Norton at King’s College London in 2008, and over the next 9 years completed 12 research projects all related in some way to patient experiences of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and other chronic illnesses. She was awarded her PhD in 2014 for a hermeneutic phenomenological study of the experience of stigma in IBD. Lesley is an acknowledged qualitative researcher with a particular expertise in hermeneutic phenomenology. She is committed to enabling advanced study and academic progression in IBD CNSs, and regularly collaborates with these specialist nurses to deliver research projects addressing issues of relevance in clinical practice. She received her Chair from the University of Greenwich in August 2021.

Lisa completed her nurse training at the North London College of Health Studies, London, UK. She has over 20 years experience working as an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) nurse specialist and has been responsible for the creation and development of IBD nursing services at The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust, St Mark’s Hospital/LNWH NHS Trust and most recently The Royal London Hospital, Barts Health. Lisa has published on topics including IBD treatment and the contribution of specialist nurses to the management of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, and has contributed in a number of collaborative publications looking at the provision of IBD care both nationally and internationally, including N-ECCO consensus statements for IBD nurses, the 2019 BSG guidelines and ECCO standards of care. She currently represents the RCN on the IBDUK board, who have recently updated the UK IBD Standards of Care. She is actively involved with education of both pre and post registration nurses regarding management of IBD, and delivery of specialist services. She has had active roles within organisations related to the specialty of IBD, including as secretary for the Royal College of Nursing IBD Special Interest group, Nurse Representative for the British Society of Gastroenterology IBD Section and Chair of N-ECCO. Since March 2019 she has been employed as Project Manager, IBD Nursing, with Crohn’s & Colitis UK, working with Isobel Mason and the charity’s Health Service Development Team on their campaign ‘More IBD Nurses – Better Care’, aiming to increase IBD nursing numbers throughout the UK and standardise training and support for nurses in post. Lisa's Twitter: @LisaYounge2

Laura is a nurse practitioner who works at the St Mark's centre for familial intestinal cancer, which embeds the polyposis registry, the family cancer and Lynch syndrome services. She is also the project manager of the Lynch syndrome quality improvement project.

In addition to being a nurse, Laura is a health psychologist and has been working with patients living with inherited conditions since 2012. She started working with patients with rare dementias at UCLH, and later with patients with inherited cardiac conditions at Imperial college, Guy's, St Thomas's & King's college Hospitals; and now with inherited colorectal cancer syndromes.

She have been interested on the psychological experience of living with inherited conditions since 2012, and today she is going to present some of her work to improve the service for patients living with Lynch syndrome.