The primary aim of our One Heart Network is to bring together the clinicians, commissioners, patient and parent representatives, and other stakeholders to meet NHS England’s CHD Standards. Whilst there is a small team coordinating the network, our success is dependent on the commitment and energy of all those involved with CHD services across the region and in particular the team of expert clinical nurse specialists I collaborate with at Great Ormond Street Hospital.  I am humbled by the enthusiastic support of stakeholders from clinical, nursing and managerial staff in our One Heart Network. I’m especially grateful to colleagues in our adult congenital cardiology services at St Bartholomew’s hospital. The physical distance between our paediatric and adult sites in central London does not inhibit wonderful collaboration on impactful projects including patient events and particularly work on our ACHD Menopause project for 2023 /2024.

I spent many years nursing all ages of cardiac patients and feel proud of my unique understanding of the lifetime of care our patients and their families undertake with us. I delighted in building trusting relationships with young people and their parents in a secondment to Cardiac Transition, recognising the positive impact in loss to follow up of strong, supportive transparent relationships.

In 2015 I moved away from clinical care and into a new area of work- digital innovation in healthcare. It was a steep learning curve! I persevered and now recognise the absolute value of clinical involvement in developing digital innovation and including patient voice in co designing service enhancement. As a leader in digital innovation, I prioritise modelling a culture of inclusivity and transparency, accepting negative feedback and failure as welcome opportunities to learn.

In the first wave of the global pandemic, I was asked to rapidly develop and implement a national digital referral for adult respiratory ECMO. I feel proud of this very successful project and proud too of the clinicians who allowed short term disruption to service delivery processes during the very worst possible moment to enhance patient information flow and patient safety. I am a passionate advocate of getting the right information to the right people at the right time. I work with great energy to support, design and deliver digital innovation for our Network, with the goal of allowing Network clinicians robust access to CHD patient information, and for patients to manage their own care through family and patient facing apps and virtual ward environments.

The Pandemic gave us the opportunity to rapidly build and deliver a vast co -designed online education programme for Network nurses. In collaboration with the great Ormond Street specialist education team and Network nurse educators we deliver an enormous programme of free online education , pitched at Network clinicians. Feedback has been positive, and we broadened our reach to offer the education nationally. The sea change in education modalities brings opportunities for achieving what I see as the ‘holy grail’ – free specialist Cardiac nursing education at ‘home’.