Ward manager
Andrew qualified from the Guy’s School of Nursing, London in December 1993 and after consolidating his Registered General Nurse training moved to Sir Michael Sobell House Hospice in Oxford in December 1994 where he worked until March 1997. At that point he moved back to the Black Country and initially worked on the ward at Compton Hospice in Wolverhampton for 12 months before being appointed to the role of Lecturer Practitioner in December 1999. This role also held an honorary lectureship with the University of Wolverhampton where he and colleagues delivered certificate, diploma, degree and masters level modules and courses relating to palliative and end of life care. During this time Andrew has held the position of External Examiner at Bolton University and External Adviser at Salford University. Andrew moved to the University of Wolverhampton as a full time Senior Lecturer in February 2021 and became a Trustee at Mary Stevens Hospice in September 2021 where he served for just over twelve months prior to being appointed to the role of Ward Manager in January 2023.
Andrew completed his professional doctorate in August 2020 which focused upon the provision of palliative and end of life care for stroke patients in the acute setting and was presented as an auto-ethnographic dissertation with a sonata framework at the heart of his research. Andrew has presented his research both locally and nationally, with a more recent poster presentation being delivered at the Palliative Congress in Edinburgh in March 2023. Andrew is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton presently supervising a doctoral student with a research focus of the care provided at a children’s hospice.
Andrew is a keen musician, with a love for both piano and pipe organ. He enjoys spending time with family and friends, walking, holidaying onboard cruise ships, and he commits some considerable time to the welfare and pastoral care of others as an active Local Preacher in the Methodist Church, which includes officiating at funerals. Andrew has a very dry and ‘sharp’ sense of humour, borne of his Black Country upbringing and education, and says his career spent within the hospice movement has been an absolute privilege.