Jessica Mandizha
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Jessica Mandizha is an Interstitial Lung Disease Clinical Nurse Specialist within the Exeter South-West Peninsula ILD Service. Over the previous ten years she has developed a passion for providing holistic and individualised patient care for people with ILD, alongside improving services and health outcomes through patient-centred research.
Within her role, Jess supports patients across the southwest region with various ILDs from diagnosis through to end-of-life care. Her focus is always on maintaining or improving quality of life for patients and their families and works alongside a supportive care team to help achieve this.
She has recently worked with a physiotherapist colleague to develop an innovative ILD-specific fatigue and breathlessness (FAB) supported self-management programme. Jess runs a nurse-led ambulatory oxygen service which is based on the principles of shared decision making.
Alongside her clinical practice, Jess is passionate about nurse-led research and has been awarded successive, competitive grants, allowing her to lead projects examining the patient experience of home spirometry in ILD and modifying a patient reported experience measure for use with ILD patients. She has presented her work at ERS congress, the ILD-IN annual conference and the BTS summer meeting, most recently winning a ‘highly commended’ prize for her work on the FAB programme.
Since qualifying from King’s College, London, Jess has gained over twenty years of nursing experience, both in the UK and overseas. This includes working in the Emergency Department, as a travel health nurse specialist, a repatriation flight nurse and a clinical research nurse. She has an MSc in Public Health.
Jess teaches at events such as regional ILD Nurse and AHP professional meetings and Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis patient education days. She enjoys mentoring others, including colleagues undertaking local research fellowships. She runs a monthly meeting for local respiratory nurses and AHPs with an interest in research, to offer mutual encouragement and support.
