Diagnosis & Therapy Sub Committee

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).

Donna is a respiratory advanced clinical practitioner working at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is passionate about improving lung health and reducing inequalities in respiratory health care.

Donna qualified as a nurse in 2003 going on to work across several specialities in acute medicine. In 2004 Donna became a critical Care nurse going on to deliver teaching in Acute Illness Management and obtaining a PG Cert in adult education before working as a critical care outreach sister. After a period working as Matron, supporting respiratory services whilst completing a Diploma in leadership and management, Donna went on to complete a master’s degree in advanced clinical Practice within acute medicine in 2022.

Donna currently works as the respiratory ACP lead and clinical lead for the respiratory virtual ward at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals. Her clinical role focuses on the acute management of patients presenting with a respiratory condition with a focus on acute asthma and COPD.  Donna has closely supported work with the Trust tobacco and nicotine dependency teams to support an uptake in these services and is keen to improve outcomes for patient through engagement with these teams.

Donna supports the British Thoracic Society quality improvement committee and Respiratory Advanced Clinical practitioner network, as committee a member on both

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 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.

Maria has worked in respiratory medicine since qualifying as a registered nurse (RN) in 2010. She began her career on an acute respiratory ward, becaming a senior nurse within 18 months of qualifying . She then gained experience a research nurse before becoming a respiratory nurse specialist in 2014, working within the local Integrated COPD team. She developed a standardised method to implement COPD care bundles for patients being admitted to hospital.

She began working in Primary care within the private sector as a respiratory nurse advisor. This allowed Maria to work within different ICBs, 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 review 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 & non-medical prescriber 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.

Maria has completed level 6 and 7 courses in COPD, Asthma, Respiratory Diagnostics and Non-Medical Prescribing. She is also a previous winner of the Association of Respiratory Nurses (ARNS) Respiratory Rising Star award in 2016. She is currently the Diagnostics lead within the Diagnosis & Therapy Sub-Committee for ARNS and has full ARTP accreditation in performing & interpreting spirometry in adults. She has recently been appointed by Asthma & Lung UK as "Respiratory Champion" for Hampshire and Isle of Wight (HIOW) ICB. She is part of the “Southampton City Airways Forum” committee and is passionate about improving and maintaining communication links between Primary, Secondary and Tertiary care.

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.