Sandy Knowles

Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing

Department of Pre-Registration Nursing

Contact Details

email: sandy.knowles@worc.ac.uk

Sandy is an experienced Senior Lecturer and Programme Lead and has worked with both direct entry pre-registration nursing and nursing associate students and apprentices, as well as post-graduate nursing and allied health professional (AHP) students. Sandy has also been involved in curriculum design for NMC approved programmes including both direct entry and apprenticeship delivery at FdSc, BSc and MSc pre-registration level and worked as a University-based Academic Lead for Practice Development for a large community Trust. Whilst at the University of Plymouth, Sandy’s programme won the 2022 Student Nursing Times Award for the Nursing Associate Training Programme Provider of the Year: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/national-award-for-plymouths-nursing-associate-programme

Sandy has enjoyed a long career in health care and practiced as a registered nurse, midwife and health visitor in the UK and also abroad. Sandy’s clinical experience as an RN includes Surgical HDU; Women’s Health; Oncology (Chemotherapy Nurse); NHS Direct; and Dialysis (haemodialysis and community ambulatory / automated peritoneal dialysis). In 2013, Sandy joined a local hospice as an End of Life Care Facilitator / Educator and taught on the Six Steps Programme, part of the 2011 NHS National End of Life Care Programme, promoting Advance Care Planning (ACP) and improved assessment and care planning as well as complex symptom control at end of life. In 2014, Sandy was promoted to the role of Hospice Community Development Lead working with local councils, NHS and private and voluntary sector colleagues, to promote a seamless approach to end of life care provision. This laid the foundations for a Compassionate City Charter for end of life care and in November 2019, Plymouth was named England’s first Compassionate City. During this time, Sandy also supported the Hospice VIP – Volunteer in Partnership – Project which focused on young people helping to support those at end of life without family and friends living locally, and also wrote and secured funding for a Community Nurse Specialist project to research and improve end of life care for the local prison population. The successful project went on to win the 2018 inaugural Burdett Nursing Awards including the delivering dignity category.

As a midwife, Sandy worked in London before going to the Middle East where she worked in high-risk obstetrics with local military families and extended her clinical experience mainly in ante and post-partum care. On successfully passing the American NCLEX Exam, Sandy worked as a Labour & Delivery Nurse caring for families in the American Navy and supporting women in labour. Again, this was an opportunity to experience practice with international colleagues and to extend her midwifery skills to include ‘scrubbing’ for emergency Caesarean Sections.

Sandy joined the University of Worcester in June 2024 and currently supports Year 2 nursing students on the following modules:

Semester 1

• NURS2001: Evidence-based practice in health and care
• NURS2001: Developing person-centred assessment in adult nursing.
• NURS2003: Essential skills for practice learning in nursing 2

Semester 2

• NURS2102: Safe and effective care planning in adult nursing
• NURS2004: Practice learning in nursing 2