9th National Gastrointestinal Nursing Conference

Wendy has worked within the field of gastro-intestinal and colorectal nursing for nearly 35 years. Having been a colorectal ward sister in Birmingham and Oxford, she specialised in Stoma Care in 1998 in Oxford and moved to Cheltenham as lead CNS in Colorectal and Stoma Care. In 2007, Wendy joined Coloplast to set up and manage the national nurse team. She is now the Clinical Lead for the company, primarily delivering training and clinical counsel to a large team of telephone advisors who support patients with a stoma and continence conditions.  

Wendy held the post of Educational committee member for the Association of Stoma Care Nurses (ASCN UK) for 8 years where she was instrumental  in developing and co-ordinating publication of the ASCN UK National Stoma Care standards and Clinical Guidelines. She continues to support two key projects with ASCN in peristomal skin terminology and parastomal herniation. Having been awarded ASCN UK Stoma Care Nurse of the year and the title of Queens Nurse in 2020 in recognition of her outstanding commitment to high standards of patient care and continually improving practice, Wendy remains passionate in raising the awareness and value of care to patients with a stoma.

Gerri is a Registered General Nurse with over 39 years of experience spanning both acute medical and surgical nursing in the acute setting, within the UK and abroad. For the last 6 years Gerri has worked in a part time academic role as a senior lecturer in Advanced Practice, teaching advanced practice skills to allied health professionals. Prior to this, she worked as the Lead Hepatology Nurse Specialist. Her expert knowledge of liver disease, has enabled her to publish widely in many nursing, prescribing and medical journals. Moreover, Gerri has a national profile and has been involved as expert advisor on x 2 Quality Standards, x 3 NICE Guidelines. In recognition of this, she was awarded the title of NICE Nurse Expert Advisor in 2015. In January 2020, Gerri and her co-author Yvonne Francis published a venesection guide for the UK, endorsed by the RCN. This guidance benefits thousands of patients who undergo venesection for haemochromatosis and polycythaemia in the UK and abroad. This recognition resulted in being awarded the prestigious Nurse of the Year 2021 accolade from the British Journal of Nursing, nominated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Gerri successfully completed her PhD in June 2021, titled “Advancing health professionals’ knowledge of liver disease.”

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

I have been involved in endoscopy since 1995, firstly as a staff nurse and then eventually holding several nurse specialist posts, including being a clinical endoscopist for the last 18 years. More recently I have been involved in training, education and development which is now the majority of my current role. I have always been passionate about training and education and with my enthusiasm for endoscopy this gives me a very engaging career pathway. I am a final year PhD student examining the lived experience of endoscopy trainees and I am an active member of BGSNA and I sit on various committees and working parties including those on sustainability.

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.

Isobel works as a nurse consultant in gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital and leads the IBD nursing strategy at Crohn’s & Colitis UK.

She has a busy clinical role running advanced nursing services for patients referred with iron deficiency anaemia, coeliac disease, IBD and dyspepsia.

Her NHS leadership role includes leading teams of clinical nurse specialists in gastroenterology & hepatology.

At Crohn’s and Colitis UK she leads the nursing strategy, which aims for all those living with IBD have access to a suitably qualified nurse specialist. The strategy includes the Crohn’s & Colitis UK nurse specialist programme, funding and supporting nurses career development and delivering the charity’s strategy in secondary care in all 4 UK countries.

Sara Santos is a Senior Nurse Endoscopist at Guy's & St. Thomas’ Hospital, having chosen this role in view of her interest in gastrointestinal medicine and previous Endoscopy experience.

In joint collaboration with her team, she leads diagnostic and therapeutic Endoscopy procedures, such as gastroscopy, colonoscopy/polypectomy, flexible sigmoidoscopy, Trans-nasal Endoscopy and BRAVO. She also leads a Rectal Bleeding Clinic and collaborates on 2WW Telephone Assessment Clinics.

She is currently undertaking a MSc in Advance Practice at King’s College London University. She is a member of the BSG Nursing Association and part of the Gastrointestinal Magazine editorial board.

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.

Lisa Younge (RGN, MSc) is the IBD Nurse Consultant at St Mark’s Hospital in Harrow. She has over 20 years experience in GI and IBD nursing, setting up and evaluating services with the aim of delivering patient centred care. She has previously been the secretary of the RCN IBD Specialist Interest Group, the nurse representative on the BSG IBD Section, and Chair of NECCO. She currently works one day per week with Crohn’s & Colitis UK as a Nursing Programme Manager, supporting the charity’s campaign to improve access to suitably trained and supported IBD nurses for patients across the UK, and represents the RCN on the IBDUK steering group, who produced the updated IBD Standards in 2019. She is passionate about IBD and working with patients to develop services which truly meet their needs. She also has a husband, a teenage son and a dog called Bingo, who has become a bit of a virtual star during lockdown Teams and Zoom meetings!

She started her career in a large central London Teaching Hospital where she completed her post graduate pharmacy diploma.

She then moved on to more specialist rotations at another London Teaching Hospitals where she gained experience in: intensive care, neurology, medicines information and microbiology.

She joined St Mark’s Hospital in 2017 as the specialist joint intensive care and gastroenterology pharmacist, where she reviewed gastroenterology and critically ill post-surgical patients.

She then moved to an IBD and homecare role in 2020 where she helped to develop pharmacy-led clinics focusing on medication optimisation, drug safety and enhancing the patient experience.

Recently, she has taken on the role as Lead IBD pharmacist for St Mark’s Hospital and is keen to develop the IBD service further in this new role.