Andy Cook is the Chief Nurse at Advantage Healthcare. He heads up our clinical service, oversees the work of our registered nurses and is responsible for the safe delivery of care. We caught up with him to find out more about his role.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I trained as a general nurse at Guy’s Hospital in London, as part of an undergraduate degree course in Nursing Studies.

Guy’s Hospital has an international reputation and is one of London’s biggest acute hospitals. I am very proud of having trained there.

I worked as an Accident and Emergency nurse for about ten years before I moved into the private hospital sector, where I worked for BUPA and Spire Healthcare hospitals. I ran the clinical services of these hospitals taking responsibility for all clinical departments including the wards, theatres, outpatients and physiotherapy.

I have also worked for the healthcare regulator, the Healthcare Commission which then became Care Quality Commission, the regulator currently responsible for health and social care in England.

I am as enthusiastic about nursing and healthcare as I was when I first started my training. I have really enjoyed the variety of experiences my career has given me and all the interesting patients and dedicated caring staff I have worked with and managed.

Out of work I enjoy running, photography, cooking (particularly baking) and playing the piano…very badly!

Could you tell us about your role?

As the Chief Nurse, I am responsible for a wide range of areas including the setting of quality standards, how we comply with regulations for care and health & safety, the management of clinical risk and making sure that we have the systems, policies and processes necessary to provide safe and high-quality care.

I oversee the professional work of all our registered nurses providing support and guidance to help them do their jobs in the best way they can.

I constantly review our service offering to ensure we are providing our clients with the very best care we can give.

What projects are you currently working on?

We run a lot of projects….and I mean a lot!

Things continually come up which need us to review our policies and systems and to put new standards in place. Healthcare is a fast moving world and so things don’t stand still for very long. At the moment we are working towards achieving the NHS standards for information governance, which is all about how we keep sensitive information safe and secure.

We are also looking at how we train our client care staff to look after people at the end of their life to make sure we are supporting those people particularly well at such a vulnerable time.

What is the best thing about your role?

Seeing such great care being provided to people who, without us, would have a more frightening, less fulfilling and less independent life. Making a difference to the lives of the clients we work with is what gets me up in the morning.

If you are interested in joining the team at Advantage Healthcare please take a look at our current vacancies at www.advantagehealthcare.com/jobs

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