NEWS FEED
A nurse working at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was selected from hundreds of hopefuls to attend the Queen’s Royal Garden Party on Tuesday 10 May.
Karen Bowers, Clinical Site Matron at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital (RBH), received the invitation after officials at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) recognised her contributions to nursing.
Nurses from across the country were invited to apply for one of a hundred places at the royal party reserved for the RCN by the Queen, who is the college’s Royal Patron. Her Majesty offered the places to the college in honour of National Nurses’ Day on Thursday 12 May.
Karen was selected to attend the prestigious event from hundreds of nurses across the country after RCN judges were impressed with her nursing achievements, which include being the first nurse working in medicine in Bournemouth to complete a practitioner degree.
Karen was also recognised for her exceptional contributions to staff development, helping fellow nurses to ‘up-skill’ in order to support consultants and doctors by performing specialist tasks out of hours, dramatically improving out of hours patient care.
She said: “I was so privileged to represent my nursing colleagues at Buckingham Palace. I have quite an old fashioned view of nursing in that patients must absolutely come first and I think that has helped me to achieve my goals. I’m also a passionate believer in the NHS and the critical role nurses have to play in its success – in the next 30 years we will be seeing some dramatic changes and nurses are going to play a huge role in how the NHS develops.”
For more information about nurses at RBH, please visit www.rbch.nhs.uk.
