Dr Jane Chudleigh is the Programme Director for Children’s Nursing here at City, University of London. Dr Chudleigh worked in the neonatal intensive care unit and specialised in A&E before undertaking a post-doctoral fellowship at Great Ormond Street Hospital, with the London Cystic Fibrosis Collaboration.

Discovering Children’s Nursing

I was about ten years old when I first became interested in children’s nursing. At the time one of my siblings was in hospital, and not long before that another one of my siblings had been in hospital with quite a serious medical condition. I remember wanting to be able to help them and other children like them. I knew there were lots of other ways to work with children, such as becoming a teacher, but I wanted to help children who weren’t well, and try and make those children’s experiences as positive as possible.

Academia

I studied Children’s Nursing for my undergraduate degree, which was quite unusual at the time. Nursing wasn’t really taught in universities at this time, but in nursing colleges, so there were a limited number of degrees on offer. My training was very inter-professional because there were only ten of us on my course. We had our core nursing modules, but joined people like medics, physiotherapists, pharmacologists and nutritionists for our other modules. It was a really interesting way of learning!

Later, I decided to do a post-doctoral fellowship at one of the London hospitals. I worked with children and families who had received a positive newborn blood spot screening result for Cystic Fibrosis. I tested lung function, analysed data and became involved in research projects and presenting research at various conferences.

Working as a Nurse

Before I became a lecturer, I had been working as a nurse in an A&E department. The roles were a bit different then, but I had worked my way up to a more senior position which meant that commonly I was the person in charge. I would have to take on other roles, look after patients with a wide range of ailments and sort out staffing issues.

Management roles were becoming available to me, but that wasn’t a route that I found interesting. I had always really enjoyed mentoring and looking after students who came on placement, and so started thinking about moving into education.

Lecturing at City

I really enjoy teaching clinical skills and research. I enjoy teaching clinical skills because it is where I started and I have a lot of experience doing them, and I enjoy teaching research because it’s such an important part of being a good nurse. You need to be able to evaluate evidence and incorporate it into practise to ensure you are the best practitioner you can be.

One of the modules I teach on is the Dissertation module, which I think lots of students can be a bit scared of before they start. I love being able to guide them through the process and break it down so it doesn’t seem so intimidating. It’s great watching their confidence grow and seeing that ‘light bulb’ moment.

The Student Experience

The team that I work with are amazing. We aren’t only colleagues, but really good friends, which I think creates a great support system for students who come here. All of us have different experiences, and we have worked in quite senior roles within practise as well as in our fields of research, so students are able to ask us anything.

Students here get the unique opportunity of going to many different trusts on placement, which gives them a really broad experience of children’s nursing. Going on placement in London also allows our students to become familiar with a variety of families and belief systems, giving them exposure that will definitely help when they graduate and are working in practise themselves.