Annet's been newly promoted to a Band 7 Clinical Nurse Specialist. Joining Trinity in 2021 after five years working as a Community Nurse, she spotted the opportunity to work in palliative care. Leaving one Band 5 role to join us here at Trinity has been a sideways career move that has paid off.

Being bold and knowing what she wanted

“When the Band 5 role was advertised at Trinity, I knew straight away that I was going to apply because I really wanted to work in palliative care. In the two years, I’ve been promoted twice. I went from a Band 5 to a Band 6 Development Clinical Nurse Specialist, and it was because of the confidence I found in this role and the chance to see what management entails that I decided to go for the promotion I now have!

I realised through this career journey that a specific strength of mine is that I am able to talk to our patients and family members in an honest and realistic way about what is happening to them and what’s ahead in the journey of palliative care and end of life.

Lots of people can assess a patient, but it’s how we have the difficult conversations that matter, especially when you are having to talk about death in cultures where it is not a typical conversation. 

A move that was intentional and personal

I was once an Accountant, juggling raising my one year old son and caring for my dad at the same time after he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. The whole reason I went into nursing is because of my dad, Francis. It was a chance comment from one of his district nurses who was at the house who said to me: ‘have you thought about doing this’ whilst I was caring for him, and I made the move to retrain as a nurse.

Feeling progression and development

Being a Band 7 Clinical Nurse Specialist will see me managing a team of Band 6 nurses and Palliative Care Assistants. As well as training and supporting them, I will also be leading external training sessions for other healthcare professionals such as Paramedics from the London Ambulance Service. Their crews will be looking to me for advice on how to prepare for handling callouts to patients receiving palliative care. What to do for them if the case in an emergency is different to your ‘usual’ patient. 

Thanks to Trinity I am going to have the chance to develop my managerial skills in areas such as handling conversations amongst mixed teams in conflict resolution.

Working at Trinity, I have a lot of job satisfaction because I believe in making the patient journey, one of having a comfortable death. Here, everyone works together, talks to each other, helps each other and there are no barriers between staff, which is something I really enjoy.

I’ve always wanted to be a Palliative care nurse and despite people saying to me over the years, ‘how can you do that, handling death and dying every day’, here I am working in the job I always wanted – just a 45 minute journey away from my front door.”

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