Emma Visca Senior Health Visitor NHS Dumfries and Galloway I grew up in a council house scheme and I’ve always loved that sense of community. All your neighbours looked out for you, and it was like a big family, the sense of a diverse group pulling together to help one another. It was the nursing…
Health Visitor
Debbie Wishart
Debbie Wishart Health Visitor NHS Forth Valley Based at the recently built Doune Health Centre, my post with NHS Forth Valley covers rural Stirlingshire. It’s an affluent, often remote community. There are a few villages but it’s mainly farms, with roughly 200 families. Visits often involve tricky journeys along remote, winding roads. I sometimes travel to these visits thinking the road has ended – but there will be a farm…
Keri Hollis
Keri Hollis Health Visitor Angus My primary role is making a difference in children’s’ lives to make sure they have the best possible start. The other part is supporting health visitors doing the job themselves. I have worked in health visiting for almost 20 years, most recently as a team leader with NHS Tayside based at Whitehills Health and Community Centre in Forfar. My job involves…
Nikki Forsyth
Nikki Forsyth Health Visitor Portlethen I work in the town of Portlethen which is close to the local city of Aberdeen. It is quite an affluent urban area with a high population of young children. As a health visitor, I work with the families of under-5s, delivering the universal pathway, monitoring and reviewing child development and…
Margaret-Ann Williamson
Margaret-Ann Williamson In her role as Health Visitor Team Lead for NHS Forth Valley covering Clackmannanshire, Margaret-Ann Williamson has been responsible for supporting staff through a period of change with the introduction of the Universal Health Visiting Pathway over the last few years. My Journey When I was in sixth year at school, deciding the…
Postgraduate prizewinner shares enthusiasm for person-centred health visiting
Meghan Tuohy, a postgraduate student at Queen Margaret University (QMU), won the QNIS academic prize at a ceremony in May. Here she walks about what the prize means to her and her plans for the future. “To be given a QNIS prize for the work I did during my postgraduate community nursing course was a…
Gemma MacDonald
Gemma MacDonald Gemma MacDonald was driven to work in maternal and infant healthcare following her own experience of having her first baby aged 19 and feeling that the support she needed wasn’t always available. When she became a mother for the second time a year later, the experience was very different. “I felt listened to,…
Clare Stiles
Clare Stiles Great Skuas are wheeling high in the sky over Burrafirth beach on the northernmost tip of Unst, itself the most northern of the Shetland Islands. Known locally as Bonxies, these large birds are fierce in their defence of their territory, and will maim and kill if they can. Watching them swoop down to…
My Juno Anniversary – the Importance of Perinatal Mental Health Support
Tess Askew is a co-founder of Juno, a perinatal support group, discussing her personal story and the importance of good mental health. My first born Ethan – the boy who came along and healed many things in my life, stole my heart and made myself and Chris a family with so much to love for…
QNIS Prizewinner’s blog – Emma Hay-Higgins
Emma Hay-Higgins won the Post Graduate Prize for Robert Gordon University, and here tells us her story. Receiving notification that I had won a Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland Postgraduate Award was a lovely surprise. It is a great honour to receive recognition for the work and learning undertaken as part of my Specialist Public Health…