Championing nurse-led services for cardiology patients

I have worked in cardiovascular nursing since qualifying in 1985 at St Mary's Hospital in London and have been a consultant nurse in cardiology at Harefield Hospital, London, since June 2000, the first such cardiology post in the UK.

The consultant nurse role was first proposed by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in 1998 with the aim of strengthening leadership in nursing, improving patient outcomes, and enhancing the quality of healthcare services. The announcement of the new role was made at the Nursing Standard Nurse 98 Awards (Martell, 2000). The role was designed to ideally share the same status as a medical consultant (Renshaw, 2005). Consultant nurse posts needed to be constructed to satisfy the needs of the specialty or service in which they were to be established. However, irrespective of the field or practice, setting or service, each post had to be structured around four core functions that exemplified the role (Department of Health (DH), 1999):