Spotlight On An Expert: July 2024

From my first placement in intensive care as a student nurse, I fell in love with the fast paced, adrenaline filled role. I have committed all of my 19
year career to this area, progressing up the ladder over the years.

I have always had a keen thirst for knowledge and enjoyed sharing this with other colleagues. I have a particular interest in difficult ventilation and, around 10 years ago, I started to organise and host conferences, open to all critical care units in the south-east of England. This has been a great forum to share current practises and run simulation training.

Obviously, everything changed in April 2020 when the pandemic hit. This will forever be a milestone moment in any critical care nurses’ career, that
I’m sure will forever cast a dark shadow when reflecting back on that time period. It is difficult to find the words to describe how horrific some of the memories of this time were, not just for myself but witnessing colleagues beyond breaking point. This was made particularly difficult when I
had to nurse one of our own colleagues who contracted COVID-19 in the second week of the first surge. I had worked with this colleague for 10 years and despite our teams’ best efforts, we had to withdraw treatment after 9 days. This experience at the start of the pandemic was both sobering and terrifying, not knowing who else could be next.

As traumatising as this two-year period was for any person working during the pandemic, little did we know at the time, the real challenges that faced critical care were still to come. Once normal life began to resume, nurses were suffering from burn out and, as a consequence of this, 50% of critical care nurses across the country left the profession. This was a huge challenge, which we are still trying to recover from today.

It was this experience during the pandemic, that led me on the career path that I am on now. Although I still undertake clinical work, my current role is focused on patients’ safety, learning from harm events and quality improvement. The process of investigating cases, putting together timelines and acting like a detective, really appealed to me, which is how I first became interested in becoming an expert witness.

I completed my expert witness training in September 2023 and have been lucky enough to have back-to-back cases ever since. I found myself surprised after 19 years of being told “If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen” how true this really was. After reviewing cases on subject areas, which I knew inside out, and tasks that I would undertake as if it was second nature, I suddenly became nervous in practice, considering the consequences of my actions and how I evidence this through documentation.

Although I have only been an expert for such a short time, the impact this has had on my professional practice had been invaluable. I now teach on the band six development and leadership course, covering ‘medico-legal’ considerations in practice. I have found myself being nominated to carry out complaint investigations, applying the skills that I have learnt through the structured approach to report writing.
The cases that I have been involved in have made me question our own standards of care within my clinical area and where risks of litigations lie and, as a result of this, I am now writing Trust Guidelines on extravasation and mouth care.

For me, being an expert, has given me the perfect work life balance. I work three days at the NHS and spend the rest of my time at home working on reports, which allows me to spend more time with my children who are seven and ten. I no longer have to work the long twelve-hour days at the weekend as overtime, and feel as if I have chosen a career path that is completely unexpected. If someone said to me five years ago, I would be writing twenty thousand word reports for court, there is just no way I could have even conceived the idea.

The main thing I have learnt since becoming an expert, is that you are capable of more than you think you are and I am looking forward to developing my career in this field.

If you've enjoyed reading about Gemma's journey from clinician, to expert witness, why not take a look in more detail at our 'Become an expert witness' pages.