BU-UHD – working in partnership – benefiting patients and staff

Our BU-UHD partnership creates benefits for both patients and staff and support efforts to attract and retain talent to our organisations.

Joint posts with Bournemouth University are helping us attract new staff to work at UHD.  Leila Kattach was working as an advanced nurse practitioner in dermatology at Guy’s Hospital London and looking to develop her skills.  Rather than take up an offered nurse consultant role she chose to make the move to Dorset for the opportunity to take up a four year PhD studentship based in our Dermatology team and linked to Bournemouth University’s Faculty of Health and Social Sciences.

Since starting the new role in September 2022, Leila has made a huge difference to the dermatology team and patients at Christchurch and helps embed research with clinical practice in the team.  On her two clinical days each week her expertise as an experienced specialist dermatology nurse is in high demand, assessing patients in the adult acne clinic, complex case clinic and rapid access clinics.  The rest of the week is dedicated to work on the research project.

Theadvanced clinical nurse specialist role clearly benefits dermatology patients and the team but why did Leila leave her role at a prestigious hospital like Guy’s St Thomas’?

“Working at Guy’s St Thomas’ forthree years was fantastic but I always wanted to do a PhD and I was struggling to see how I could manage this alongside full-time work. Not only is this option financially more viable for me than a full time PhD but I also hope to complete in four years rather than up to eight years needed to complete in my own time – eight years sounds really tough!”

“The combination of leading on a research project and working clinically to use all my experience to create change is very exciting.  Lots of research is usually doctor led but nurses have a great deal of knowledge to share and have insights which can be used to investigate and improve areas and models that can make a huge difference to patients and staff. 

“Many years ago I saw a patient who was a young mum of three.  She was a lovely lady who very sadly lost her life from skin cancer after not being referred earlier enough. This has stuck with me and so when this role came that was fully funded AND had the focus on a nurse-led model of care for early skin cancer detection; it felt like this was what I’d been waiting for. 

“Most nurses have seen things that they want to make better and I see this as my opportunity to make the change. I’ve had lots of support from the Trust, my kind and supportive dermatology consultant supervisor Dr Pearson, the UHD dermatology team plus benefited from support of my supervisory team at BU.  This joint role has given me access to a huge amount of additional learning helping me develop my research skills. 

“I feel very lucky to have this opportunity. Detecting skin cancer early saves lives, and I’m hoping the outcome of this research will be used by dermatology units across the country to make positive changes. For me personally, the research isn’t to enable me to become a fulltime lecturer in the future but to use my expertise and continue my journey as a clinical researcher whilst staying patient facing. 

“If you’re thinking that combining research and practice is something that could work for you and the opportunity arises, I’d say go for it 100%. Is it hard work? Yes, but will it be worth it? Absolutely!”