Michelle has worked in a variety of clinical roles within her 18-year career working in the NHS, predominantly in an acute health care environment. Her roles have varied working within surgery, pain management, Women’s health, sexual health and practice education before moving into nursing management and performance.

Working within the NHS is something Michelle is very proud of and is where she developed an interest in teaching and supporting others. Michelle was the lead for the Assistant Practitioner programme at Bolton NHS Trust, which involved supporting students and staff with the introduction of a new role that worked across traditional professional boundaries. Michelle then took a strategic role as Assistant Head of Clinical Practice, where her interests and role expanded to develop and improve Nursing Performance, service redesign and ultimately the quality of patient care.

She was Project Manager for the ‘Reducing Mortality’ initiative, which was an Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) strategic direction and worked with a team of physicians and clinical specialists to introduce care bundles and pathways to improve the care specifically within the emergency care assessment areas. This initiative also included pathways to improve End of Life Care, and guidelines to improve response to the deteriorating patient. Michelle worked as part of the senior management team, working along with clinicians and ward staff alike to promote improving care through quality improvement projects and maintaining high clinical standards through policy building.

Michelle first worked at the University of Bolton as a lecturer on the FdA in Health and Social Care programme and soon became Programme Lead for this, leading the development and implementation of the Assistant Practitioner role.

In 2016 she moved on to lead on the MSc in Advanced Practice and MSc in Clinical Practice Programmes which supports students to expand, develop and extend their role and clinical skills within the field of Advanced Practice. In 2018, Michelle led the development of the new Physician Associate MSc programme and expanded her interest in role development further with the introduction of the new clinical Physician Associate role who work within the field of Medicine.

Michelle is now the Head of the School for Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, which houses 14 postgraduate pathways for Advanced Clinical Practice (ACP), including the ACP Apprenticeship routes, and the Physician Associate programme, and Paramedic Science, which she still enjoys teaching across these programmes. The School houses other Allied Health, Sport and Science programmes including; Physiotherapy, Medical Biology, Biomedical Sciences, Sports Rehabilitation, Strength and Conditioning and a suite of Continuing Professional Development programmes.

Michelle’s research interests lie in role development, and inter-professional simulation, and alongside her academic teams she has developed and embedded interprofessional simulation across the programmes within the school. Her interest in simulation continues to grow and develop with more recent simulations with the wider professions; including working alongside Greater Manchester Police Tactical Fire Arms Unit, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, and North West Ambulance Service.