A new senior appointment has been made at the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) to help raise the profile of rehabilitation nurses and develop the range of skills they bring to patient care.
Rebecca Kenny has been named Lead Nurse at the new £105million facility, which is being created as a focal point for rehab and neuro-rehab nationally.
And over the next 12 months, she plans to develop a first-of-its-kind professional Nursing Rehabilitation Course to help introduce more nurses to the field of specialist rehabilitation nursing.
“Being a nurse can give you so many amazing opportunities, and this is a particularly exciting time for rehabilitation nursing as it is so high on the national and international agenda – we have the chance to pioneer the rehab nursing journey which so often goes unseen,” says Rebecca.
“Rehabilitation nurses are a very special nursing team – they have to be so diverse in their thinking, working out creative solutions to our patients’ challenges and working closely with them and their families every step of the way.
“Many nurses and healthcare support staff across our acute wards have supported the rehabilitation of patients during their working day, so this is an opportunity to work with the same patient group, but at the next step on their recovery journey.
“Rehabilitation nurses live, work and breathe a holistic model of care, and we know this can be challenging to get right in an acute environment. We know the NRC will be able to support this in a way not seen before, which is very exciting.”
Rebecca’s appointment is the latest step in the creation of the NRC, a 70-bed, purpose-built NHS facility being built on the Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate, already home to the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC).
The NRC will combine patient care with research, innovation and training, and help to pioneer innovative new approaches to rehabilitation, including new technologies, with real time feedback from clinicians and patients.
Having had an award-winning career to date in a variety of environments, including one of London’s busy major trauma centres, Rebecca is relishing her new challenge.
“This role just blew me away – the NRC ambition is incredibly forward-thinking, and we will be caring for patients in a state-of-the-art facility which will also be a great work environment for our staff. It will have a completely different feel and energy to what we can provide in an acute hospital setting,” she says.
“Our Linden Lodge team do a fantastic job and are often supporting complex patients in difficult circumstances, predominantly in need of neurological rehabilitation.
“It’s really exciting that the team will bring a wealth of neuro-rehab expertise with them, expertise which will expand to a range of complex rehabilitation needs across musculoskeletal, major trauma, and deconditioning from long hospital stays, to name a few.”
Rebecca completed her nursing training at the University of Nottingham, and her first job was on an admissions ward at Lincoln County Hospital when she first qualified in 2010, before she moved to London to work in the busy Emergency Departments at Charing Cross Hospital and major trauma centre St Mary’s Hospital Paddington.
“I enjoyed the pace and the teamwork in such a busy environment, as well as helping patients at the early stage of their trauma,” she says.
“These were people who had been going about their day-to-day lives, and then their life had been turned upside down; it was a privilege to be there to help them.
“Now in this new role, it’s about how we can support people through the rest of their lives.”
In 2015, Rebecca was named the Nursing Times’ Rising Star, and was awarded the Chairman’s Award at Imperial College Healthcare for ‘Engaging teams for success’ through her work on teamwork and developing people to help improve health outcomes.
It was at this point that Rebecca decided to complete the Darzi Fellowship in Healthcare Leadership and moved to Nottingham with her husband, where she put her new leadership skills to use as Patient Safety Lead at Leicester’s Hospitals.
Rebecca then joined Nottingham University Hospitals, where she has held several roles, including working as an operational Matron with the Cancer and Associated Specialities Team and also as a Senior Nurse for Care Excellence Accreditation with the Institute of Care Excellence
In addition to her new role at the NRC, Rebecca is currently undertaking her Masters of Business Administration via the apprenticeship scheme at Nottingham Trent University.
