Clifton’s Practice Development Sister, Donna Hargreaves
Clifton Hospital has welcomed a new member to the team who will be supporting staff training across the Lytham St Annes site.
Donna Hargreaves, Clifton’s first Practice Development (PD) Nurse, is now on hand to provide the same quality training and education opportunities as colleagues across Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Donna has been working at the Trust for 30 years and has performed a number of roles. She said: “I successfully applied and took up post as Clifton’s first ever PD nurse where I have now been for a few weeks. I support staff full time, Monday to Friday.
“I want to entrench the “Teaching Hospital” ethos firmly within Clifton, making this a supportive, nurturing highly sought after place to work, where learning is every day, progression is a given and where talent is free to flourish.”
Donna started her career as an auxiliary nurse on a female medical ward at Blackpool Victoria Hospital while waiting to start training in 1989.
She went on to nurse within the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) before becoming a Medical Devices Training Sister in Critical Care – the first in the country.
Her other roles include clinical advisor for the 111 service, a recovery theatre practitioner and working in the community with people with learning disabilities before returning to Critical Care.
Donna said: “I began benching back on Critical Care, was offered a permanent post, which I took up, applied for a practice development supportive role and was soon promoted to practice development nurse when COVID hit – by far the biggest challenge of my whole nursing career.”
Now settled in at Clifton, Donna is enjoying her new post. She added: “I absolutely love it here! It is quite different from my previous posts, I am learning such a lot every day, I appreciate how hard the lovely staff work here and how much they care for the patients and how proud they all are to work at Clifton.
“They are now taking full advantage of having their very own PD nurse because I tell them that they are here for their patients, but I am here for them.
“I am looking forward to an exciting future here at Clifton. It is the shining light within COVID times. It’s a great privilege to come to work each day.”