A multifaceted and enjoyable career in mental health care, spanning clinical practice, research and policy development

It important to say that any success I have enjoyed in my career has, for the large part, come about because I have been ‘in the right place, at the right time, with the right people’. Definitely the right people!

I first became a registered nurse 53 years ago in late 1972. My nurse training, in what could now be described as an ‘apprenticeship’ model, took place almost entirely in hospital settings, with an on-site ‘School of Nursing’. Following my registration, I worked as a charge nurse and clinical teacher. I then obtained a place on what is now regarded as a landmark development in mental health nursing: an 18-month, full-time training course in evidence-based psychological therapies (Gournay, 2000).

The skills that I had acquired then served me well until I eventually retired from clinical practice in late 2023. During this training, I began to appreciate the need to always approach my clinical work with a question about the evidence that supported my treatment intervention.