A nurse leading change on the hospital frontline

Becoming a nurse wasn’t on Colette Datt’s agenda. But ditching a nascent career in banking for life on the wards has paid dividends. The associate director of nursing at North Middlesex University Hospital was awarded an honorary MBE for her services to nursing by Queen Elizabeth II last year. Datt applies a business-like lens to fix healthcare gaps and says nurses are best placed to identify them.

“As a child I was small and a bit sickly – I spent a little bit of time in hospital and my parents didn’t think I was strong enough to be a nurse. It wasn’t considered an option for me,” says the Waterford native. With good exam results, an offer of a teacher-training course and a secretarial course, she answered a Barclays Bank advertisement offering a place on its management training programme with accommodation in London.

Datt loved multicultural London, just not banking. Compared to tales from the wards she heard from her trainee nurse sister, banking felt restricted and constrained. “Nursing seemed so much more interesting than what I was doing and I thought, ‘I’d really like to do this’, so I applied,” says Datt.

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Paediatric nursing was always the draw and after her training, she moved to Great Ormond Street, specialising in paediatric intensive care. Since then, she has progressed up the ranks of nursing in various roles.

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“I’ve always been good at looking at areas for improvement and proceeding to improve,” says Datt. She attributes this entrepreneurial way of thinking to her businessman father. “He would just get on and do things and I did just get on and do things.”

When a young carer accompanying her parent to the emergency department wasn’t recognised as the main carer and kept informed, Datt spotted a gap.

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“Because she was a child [and a] carer, she wasn’t given any information. Her role wasn’t acknowledged, yet her parent was discharged home into her care,” says Datt. Collaborating with her management team at Whittington Health NHS Trust and young carers, Datt developed a carer’s passport. “Young carers coming into hospital can now show the passport, it has their rights, including their right to information,” says Datt. This innovation saw her win a Penna Patient Experience award in 2018.

With an MSc Allergy from Imperial College London under her belt, Datt also identified that children admitted to hospital with asthma could be better helped upstream.

“What we needed to do is target schools and do some prevention work,” she says. She developed asthma-friendly standards for schools in her local area of Islington and then benchmarked 60 schools against them. The resulting impact on health outcomes for children won Datt a Nursing Times award in 2019. School absences due to asthma were also cut.

Datt has also worked to improve the hospital experience of autistic children.

The environment is a sensory assault for some. “A young person came into clinic and didn’t feel heard because of her autism,” says Datt. “Mostly it’s overstimulation because of bright lights, the bright colours in children’s wards, the noise, being totally overwhelmed by the sensory environment. Being able to articulate her health issues was made worse by not feeling safe in the environment.”

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Datt channelled grant money into accommodation and improvements, including developing social story videos to enable autistic people to prepare for their hospital visit. For her ability to co-produce innovations alongside children and young people, Datt was named Nursing Times’ 2018 Nurse Leader of the Year.

Having dedicated her career to improving the hospital experience of babies, children and young people, she is equally driven to amplify the voices of young nurses to create systemic change.

It was fabulous to get it from the queen, and then the queen died, so I was one of the last people to get an honorary MBE from her

Having completing the Florence Nightingale Foundation aspiring nurse leader scholarship in her late 40s, Datt wishes this leadership training had come earlier in her career and wants those training opportunities for junior nurses. “Nurses are frontline, we are the people who can see the areas of improvement, but we have different medical training to our other colleagues. We are not necessarily empowered to speak up. We see more. We have the ideas, but don’t always have the skills and the voice.”

Datt’s scholarship included Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada) training in public speaking, coaching and £10,000 to spend on personal development. “We don’t normally get that in nursing. There are funds to develop us from a clinical perspective, but that leadership enabling is amazing,” says Datt.

She convinced the Florence Nightingale Foundation to pilot a leadership programme for student nurses. Three local universities that feed graduates to the North Middlesex University Hospital at which she is now associate director of nursing have funded nine student nurses to participate.

“We wanted to develop their voice earlier, give them some quality improvement skills so that they would make improvements where they saw the need, give them the Rada training and leadership training,” says Datt. The pilot has shown impact. “The plan is to roll it out in four trusts next year. I’d like it to go nationally really,” says Datt.

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With an English husband and two young adult children there, Datt is enmeshed in British life and public service. Last year, she was chosen to carry the lamp representing the memory of nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale at the annual commemorative service for nurses in Westminster Abbey. The honour is a significant privilege in the nursing world.

“My brother was in a pub in Clonmel and somebody said to him, did you see they had an Irish nurse in Westminster Abbey. He said, that’s my sister,” jokes Datt.

Receiving an embossed envelope with news of an MBE for her services to nursing two years ago was “a shock, and a huge privilege”, says Datt. There were a few twists in the road, however. “They came back to me and said because you aren’t British, you are not eligible for an MBE, we are really sorry,” recalls Datt.

Her husband’s suggestion of giving up her Irish passport for British citizenship didn’t fly with her. The workaround was an honorary MBE. The honour came just 24 hours before Queen Elizabeth’s death, one of the final acts of her reign.

“It was fabulous to get it from the queen, and then the queen died, so I was one of the last people to get an honorary MBE from her,” says Datt.

Hospital work, research, academia and management are all options, as are overseas travel, professional development and family flexibility

Getting on top of post-Covid waiting lists and funding to meet the demands of a growing number of NHS service-users are the challenges of the day, she says. This includes the recruitment of international nurses.

Staff wellbeing and resilience post-Covid is also a challenge. “I think a lot of younger nurses really struggle. They are less resilient than I feel I am. Young people are also less accepting of what’s not acceptable, whereas I think my generation just accepts and does,” says Datt.

Nursing is a phenomenal career, she says, and the UK offers career and earning opportunities upwards of £150,000 (€175,000) for chief nurses. Hospital work, research, academia and management are all options, as are overseas travel, professional development and family flexibility.

Her nursing skills are valuable beyond the workplace, she says. “It gives me the ability to support people outside of work, the skills are more generalisable on a daily basis. What you learn as a nurse has an impact on all parts of your life.”