East of England

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Sue Hatton – Regional Deputy Head of Nursing and Midwifery 

Sue started her nursing career as a nursery nurse and once registered as a nurse, worked in a renal dialysis unit in Birmingham. After training as a children’s nurse, Sue has held a variety of posts working at tertiary and district general hospitals in London, Birmingham and Coventry. She set up community children’s nursing and palliative care services during the 1990s and after completing her Master of Science in Advanced Nursing Practice, Sue developed the Coventry and Warwickshire Princess Diana community children’s nursing team.  

Sue also has experience working in national and regional positions in maternity, child health and nursing across strategy, policy and workforce.  

Nicky Burns-Muir – Clinical Advisory Lead 

Nicky provides clinical and leadership support to the regional team and oversees the delivery of regional maternity programmes related to workforce including; new generations; retention; workforce transformation and leadership.  

Gabby Irwin

Gabby is head of nursing and workforce in the region. She is currently leading on international recruitment of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. 

Debbie Cubitt – Senior Clinical Lead for Nursing and Midwifery 

Debbie’s career started as an orthopaedic nurse, caring for elective and trauma patients for many years. Her career progressed from senior staff nurse to ward sister. Debbie then undertook a nursing audit role which enabled her to view the organisation strategically, but her passion was always education. Debbie was appointed as one of the first practice educator facilitators in Essex, a job which meant she supported, nurtured and guided learners. Debbie’s current role includes supporting two workstreams; nursing associates and preceptorships. As the regional preceptorship lead alongside Sally Nuttall, Debbie works in supporting and facilitating the implementation of the new national preceptorship framework. 

Cate Morgan – Senior Clinical Lead for Nursing and Midwifery 

Cate leads the Reducing Pre-registration Attrition and Improving Retention (RePAIR) programme in the region. 

Cate previously worked in acute hospitals in surgical and accident and emergency nursing. Cate is passionate about ensuring student voices are heard and spent 22 years in an educational role at a regional acute trust, as well as roles in universities as a lecturer.  

Sally Nuttall - Senior Clinical Lead for Nursing and Midwifery

Sally currently works two days a week as a general practice nurse and three days as a senior clinical lead in the east of England team. Sally also has previously specialised in primary care and district nursing plus has experience as an assistant professor of nursing.  

Sally’s current role within the regional team focuses on legacy practitioners and mentors, nursing associates and apprenticeships, plus nursing and midwifery fellowships. Sally also works with preceptorship colleagues and the Practice Education Forum, alongside working generally across quality, commissioning and retention.  

Paul Sewell – RePAIR Fellow 

Paul’s healthcare journey started in 2000 as a health care assistant at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. Following his desire to take his nursing journey to registration and beyond, Paul studied at the University of East Anglia. Paul’s primary clinical background is in cardiology, along with some experiences of both orthopaedics and clinical research. He has worked across several educational roles over recent years, supporting both students and apprentices. Paul joined the east of England team in 2023 as a RePAIR fellow, in this role he will be supporting student and newly qualified retention.  

Louisa White - Health Care Support Worker Lead

Louisa started her career in the NHS service as a Health Care Support worker before training to become a midwife. With over 20 years’ experience predominantly as a community midwife she has always felt empowered to look at innovative ways to improve service provision. Following progressing her career to community matron, Louisa took a side step to a more strategic role in October 2021 to support and lead on the health care support worker programme. Her current role supports trusts in the East of England with recruitment, retention and development of health care support workers, an area she feels very passionate about.

Mandy Kerr - Senior Clinical Lead

Mandy is a registered midwife with 33 years' experience in different maternity settings and roles. Mandy qualified as a nurse in 1984, and then trained as a midwife in 1985. She has worked in many acute settings, but for six years worked in a holistic birth centre which pioneered waterbirth and alternative therapies. Mandy has had a variety of roles, from a rotational midwife, labour ward coordinator, then practice development midwife before taking on the responsibilities of maternity matron. While working as a practice development midwife, Mandy trained as a supervisor of midwives, converting to professional midwifery advocate once supervision was removed from statute. Her current role is as a senior clinical lead with NHSE Workforce, Training and Education Directorate, her portfolios include: Return to Practice, Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism, and the Higher Development Award for the healthcare support worker programme. 

Oliver Inwards - Apprenticeship Relationship Manager

Oliver joined our organisation in 2014 as an apprentice himself, and has worked on the apprenticeship and talent for care agenda since 2015, maintaining a great passion for the programmes of work throughout his time in the organisation. Oliver has worked on the 50,000 nurses programme, in particular on increasing registered nurse degree apprenticeships across England. Alongside his work Oliver is about to enter his final year of his level 6 degree in chartered management at Aston University! You can read more about Oliver and his apprenticeship journey here.

Oliver is looking forward to continuing to build on the great work happening in the East of England, working with health and social care colleagues across the system to facilitate the growth and sustainability of apprenticeships, as well as other Talent for Care programmes, to help meet workforce needs in the region. 

Jenny Maine

Jenny has worked in the NHS since 1996 in a range of roles such as commissioning, programme management, service redesign and improvement, learning and development and recruitment, retention. Jenny has worked both regionally and, in the Cambridge and Peterborough systems. She is a qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (MCIPD) and is MSP (Managing successful programmes) qualified. Jenny currently works as the Nursing Workforce Programme Manager, helping to deliver the ambition of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan focussing on the Health Care Support Worker programme across the East of England region. 

This section highlights the priorities for the nursing and midwifery team. 

We are focused on supporting sustainable, long-term growth in the nursing and midwifery workforce, which is vital to ensure that the health system has the right workforce, in the right numbers, to support high-quality and safe nursing and maternity care for patients in our region.

We welcomed regional student quality ambassadors to the regional retention conference on 16 March. This event had a specific focus on student and staff retention. Their learner voice was heard by workforce leads, chief nurses and education leads from across the region, and we captured some of this and created a short series of interviews, please watch to see what they had to say. 

If you would like more information or would like to join our regional quality ambassador network, which includes students and preceptees, please email the team.

This section includes opportunities and upcoming events that you can get involved with. 

Regional student quality ambassador and regional preceptee quality ambassadors 

As part of the RePAIR programme in the region we have relaunched our regional student quality ambassadors (RSQA) and regional preceptee quality ambassadors (RPQA).  

Are you studying in the east of England as a student or apprentice on a non-medical pre-registration health care programme, or are a newly qualified professional in your preceptorship period? If yes, come and find out more about our ambassador roles. Don’t miss a great opportunity to share your perspectives as we work with colleagues to enhance student and preceptee experiences. In doing so we aim to maximise retention of our future and our new workforce during their programmes and beyond. To get involved or come along to future meetings email the team.

Dates for upcoming meetings:

20 July - 12:00 - 13:30

21 September - 12 - 13:30 

19 October 12:00 - 13:30

23 November 12:00 - 13:30

21 December 12:00 - 13:30

To find out more about the RePAIR team, please see information about Cate and Paul in the 'meet the team' section above.

For further information about the RePAIR programme visit the webpage.