
Iain Wheatley
Chair of Diagnosis & Therapy Sub Committee
Sleep and Ventilation Lead
Iain qualified as a nurse in 1996 after a short career in the military and worked in general medicine before becoming a critical care nurse and developing the role as part of what was then the new critical care outreach team. With critical care skills Iain set up the Medical Acute Dependency Unit and later set up the Sleep and ventilation service. In 2005 he achieved an MSc with Merit in advanced Nursing Practice and subsequently published research on level one patient observations. In 2007 Iain completed his V300 Non-medical prescribing qualification, and has other qualifications including a Dip in management, sleep and ventilation and spirometry. Iain is the non-medical prescribing lead, as well as the lead for the level 6 and 7 degree respiratory course for his Trust. He has published and presented papers on various aspects of sleep and ventilation. Currently Iain is a Nurse Consultant for acute and respiratory care managing teams including, Sleep and Ventilation, Health Improvement Tobacco dependency, Tuberculosis specialist nurses and the Respiratory Specialist nurses.
Iain is the Sub Committee member lead for sleep and ventilation for the Therapy committee for the Association of Respiratory Nurse Specialists (ARNS). He is a co-chair for the OSA Alliance, as well as a member of the Clinical Reference group for Respiratory specialist commissioning,. Iain has worked with NICE on NG202 Obstructive sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome and obesity hypoventilation syndrome in over 16s (2021), and has worked with NCEPOD on the Non-invasive Ventilation Inspiring Change (2017).

Yvonne MacNicol
Smoking Cessation Lead
Yvonne MacNicol is a fully qualified nurse who has worked in the field of Smoking Cessation and Tobacco Prevention and Protection since 2005. During this time Yvonne has worked in both the hospital and the community supporting patients to stop smoking. In the last six years, while working for the NHS, her focus was on partnership working, community development and capacity building using asset-based approaches to deliver tobacco prevention and protection. Working in collaboration with key partners in the public, private and third sector, has provided vital experience when aiming to lessen health inequalities through locality working. Yvonne has over 12 years’ experience promoting health and wellbeing in areas of deprivation, with a hard to reach client group. Following the completion of her MSc in Public Health and Health Promotion, Yvonne was invited to attend the British Thoracic Society Winter conference to deliver a poster presentation of her abstract entitled ‘Investigating changes in parents’ perceptions and attitudes of smoking in the home after a second-hand smoke educational intervention in nurseries.’
Currently Yvonne holds the position of Lecturer in Adult Nursing at the University of the Stirling but is still involved in tobacco research and is a current member of the British Thoracic Society Tobacco Specialist Advisor Group.

Kerry Woodward
Prescribing Lead
Kerry qualified as a RN in 2001 and worked in emergency care for a short time before moving to primary care. She initially completing the Asthma and COPD diplomas with the support of some exceptional Respiratory Nurses who sparked her passion for this field of nursing. After gaining experience in respiratory and completing further diplomas and certificates such as her ARTP Spirometry and leadership modules, Kerry went on to complete a Respiratory specific BSc and her PGCert, which included the non-medical prescribing module.
Kerry now works as a Respiratory Nurse Specialist in primary care and is a Primary Care Network lead, as well as providing support to the CCG. She provides respiratory education, regularly running courses in the local area for healthcare professionals and has recently been involved in projects such as a local long-term conditions hub, working in collaboration with secondary care, looking at diagnosis and management of complex respiratory patients. Kerry also supports the running of her local PCRS peer support network.
Kerry has always been committed to delivering patient-centred, evidence-based care to her patients and is an advocate for improving standards in respiratory care. Kerry has been a member of ARNS for many years and became a committee member in 2021.

Sara Mason
Oxygen Lead
Sara has been nursing since 1990 and has had a varied career in acute and community settings working for the NHS and the private sector. To name a few she was a theatre sister, worked in private education and experienced life as a clinical sales rep. She is currently the Senior Oxygen nurse and Team lead of the home Oxygen service, for North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation trust.
She began working as a Specialist Respiratory nurse in 2014 within the community respiratory team. Her main role was to develop the limited service on offer to home Oxygen patients in West Cumbria. Sara developed a passion for all things Oxygen, expanding this initial service, writing local guidelines and procedures to ensure patients were receiving evidenced based therapy whilst embedding a culture of safety and risk mitigation. She was successful in petitioning for further funding to expand the service to cover the whole of North Cumbria recruiting and training a small team of nurses and an administrator to form North Cumbria Home Oxygen service. The team are responsible for the safe and effective assessment, prescribing and review of home Oxygen for over 500 patients.
She is a member of the North West Service review group, NW Quality and Performance group and the NW Steering group and co-wrote the North West Quality standards. Sara also works closely with colleagues in the North East as part of North East North Cumbria Integrated care system and is currently on a committee developing ILD Oxygen Guidelines. She was one of the evaluators in 2019 for the procurement bids against the new NHS England Oxygen contract which brought her into contact with many people for home Oxygen services around the country. Locally she community and hospital trusts has merged and she runs an Oxygen best practise group and continues to work very closely with the community respirtory teams and her respiratory colleagues in the acute hospitals. Sara has developed and implemented a streamlined pathway for patients with Cluster headaches in North Cumbria to reduce waiting times for treatment with Oxygen. She also provides an advisory and support service to paediatric colleagues.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, Sara developed protocols and pathways and lead on many initiatives. In the first wave she managed an Oxygen weaning programme to facilitate rapid discharge. In the second wave she set up the COVID virtual ward. She also developed pathways for the Oxygen monitoring and education in care homes and advised on the implementation of the Oximetry@home initiative.
Sara wants to use this opportunity to be a champion for patients and staff in the Oxygen world challenging, influencing and promoting best practise in our field.

Christine Loveridge
Diagnostics Lead
Having worked for over 20 years as a respiratory nurse initially setting up and running a COPD service with the advent of the GP contract in 2004, Christine is more than qualified to deliver the new format of respiratory care in the form of a diagnostic hubs. Her most recent face to face project saw her working back in primary care given the opportunity to transform respiratory care and create a diagnostic hub. It enabled her to put all her years of experience into practice to deliver respiratory care differently for this group of patients within an innovative Primary Care Network.
Christine believes every person has a right to the correct diagnosis and treatment and the current misdiagnosis must be addressed by appropriate training and education. Her most recent project has been the writing, creating and production of four online spirometry eLearning courses for Rotherham Respiratory.
Her latest project is remote spirometry interpretation for a forward-thinking spirometry service in the South of the country. Her appointment as ARNS diagnostic lead will enable her to try and change policy and practice for the greater good of the patients.

Maria Eurton
Diagnostics Deputy Lead
Maria has worked in respiratory medicine since qualifying as a registered nurse (RN) in 2010. She began her career on an acute respiratory ward, including caring for patients with chest drains, non-invasive ventilation and tracheostomies. She became a senior nurse within 18 months of qualifying and completed a course in mentorship.
She first gained experience in spirometry working as a research nurse, performing these tests for patients daily. She became a respiratory nurse specialist in 2014 where she worked with the Integrated COPD team. She developed a standardised method to implement COPD care bundles for patients being admitted to hospital. This is still being used within the University of Southampton Hospital Foundation Trust today. She was regularly involved in MDT meetings (including morbidity and mortality) and the National COPD audit.
She began working in Primary care within the private sector, as a respiratory nurse advisor. This allowed Maria to work within different CCGs, providing mentorship and education for practice nurses, GPs and other allied health professionals. She regularly delivered respiratory education modules on a 1:1 basis and in larger groups. She jointly developed a pathway for acute asthma admissions to ensure appropriate follow up with a respiratory nurse specialist post discharge. This aimed to reduce the likelihood of re-admission to hospital and referring patients who were suitable to the Difficult Asthma / Severe Asthma service at University of Southampton Hospital Foundation Trust.
Maria is currently working as a clinical respiratory nurse specialist at a large Primary Care Network (PCN) in Southampton. She has played a pivotal role in the implementation of a new respiratory pathway, which includes the re-introduction of Spirometry post COVID19. She supports and mentors practice nurses and HCAs within the PCN as well as providing reviews for complex respiratory patients with multiple co-morbidities. She also works closely within the Urgent Care Team alongside Advanced Nurse Practitioners to deliver urgent reviews for respiratory patients, providing acute care and further optimisation of their treatment. She is working towards becoming an Advanced Respiratory Nurse Practitioner within the PCN.
Maria has completed courses in COPD and Asthma. She is also a previous winner of the ARNS Respiratory Rising Star award in 2016. After this, she completed a course in “Respiratory Diagnostics” which further increased her passion and interest in the field. She has full ARTP accreditation in performing & interpreting spirometry. She is part of the “Southampton Airways Forum” committee and is passionate about improving and maintaining communication links between Primary, Secondary and Tertiary care. She is part of the Diagnosis & Therapy Sub-Committee for ARNS. She would like to use this opportunity to focus on the re-introduction diagnostic services, including Spirometry and Fractional Exhaled Nitric Oxide (FeNO) in Primary care throughout the UK.

Elaine Bevan-Smith
Pulmonary Rehabilitation Lead
Qualifying as an RGN in Birmingham in 1985, Elaine worked in a number of medical specialities before settling into a career in respiratory medicine. She trained as an advanced nurse practitioner in 1996 and went on to create an effective community service model for people with COPD which included Pulmonary rehabilitation. Securing significant funding enabled her to scale this care model up to create an integrated multidisciplinary County wide COPD team in Worcestershire. She was clinical lead for this service for many years and contributed to many of the respiratory developments in the County. She completed a Doctorate in 2008 where she studied the concept of motivation in pulmonary rehabilitation, developing a valid and reliable psychometric measure of self-regulation. Elaine was a co-author on the 2013 pulmonary rehabilitation NICE guideline and was a committee member for the subsequent PR quality standards and first National PR audit.
In recent years she has followed a more academic career pathway in order to build her research and teaching portfolio. She developed an accessible physical activity model of PR called 'breathehappy' and has researched this and other alternative models of PR such as remote PR during COVID. She is a clinical advisor to the AHSN for the lunghealth@home programme and has worked as a QI coach on the NACAP programme. She is currently working as an ANP in primary care.
Our Team
Executive Committee
Respiratory Disease
Sub Committee
Research and Education
Sub Committee