We hear from our Rehabilitation Staff Nurse Gary Miles this week as part of our weekly celebration of the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife. And if you want to get involved comms would love to hear from you.

Why did you want to become a nurse?
A few of my friends are nurses and said I would make a good nurse. I also enjoy caring for people and want to ‘get people better’. After working in customer service and hospitality I decided to go for it. I was fortunate to study nursing as a mature student at the University of Huddersfield. I thought ‘better late than never!’
 

Why is nursing special career to you?
It is a privilege to care for a person in their time of need, when they are at their most vulnerable.  I enjoy working in teams to help improve a patient’s experience. Nursing offers a great opportunity for a varied career. I am lucky enough to be currently working as a Clinical Academic Nurse. This means that I have two interlinked roles. I have my clinical role on the Stroke Rehabilitation Unit, which is the main reason I came into nursing. Working on the unit has enabled me to consolidate my clinical skills and provide high quality care to patients and their families.
I enjoy being part of a multidisciplinary team, seeing a patient reach their goals and work with great members.  

I also have an academic role. In this role I work with Professor Felicity Astin, (who developed this joint post between CHFT and the University of Huddersfield), to learn about how research evidence can be applied in practice to improve patient care. One of the work streams is about improving the ‘patient sleep experience’. In this work I have collected patient and staff feedback about what causes noise at night. Using this feedback our team has been working across different departments to see what we can do to minimise noise at night. I have also learnt about how to write a successful conference abstract. I will be presenting our work at a national conference later this year which is an exciting opportunity.    
 

Sum up Nursing in three words

‘Compassion’, ‘communication’ and ‘evidence-based care’

*Get in touch if we can help share your story of being a nurse or midwife. Email sana.mohiuddin@cht.nhs.uk