Story Series: Carrie-Ann Black
2020 is the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, a time to reflect on the skills, commitment and expert clinical care that nurses and midwives bring, and the impact they make on the lives of so many. Here Carrie-Ann Black talks about her nursing career.
"I wanted to start this story by saying that I always wanted to be a nurse, that I come from a long generation of nursing and it was the career I always wanted but that wouldn’t be true.
"I’m the first nurse in my family and when I was little, I wanted to be a zoologist! I naively thought that if you were a nurse you either worked in hospital (like the TV series Casualty) or at a local GP surgery. In fact, I had never thought about being a nurse until I was in my late twenties, yet training as a nurse can only be described for me as "like coming home".
"I had lost my way a bit after completing my ungraduated degree and was really conflicted between embarking on an academic career or a creative one, thinking it wasn’t possible to combine the two. Eventually I trained as a silversmith and contemporary jewellery designer and started my own business. Part of my work portfolio was providing workshops, particularly to vulnerable groups and it quickly became my favourite thing to do.
"I loved getting alongside people and providing a safe space to engage with their creativity, I saw with my own eyes the wellbeing benefits of these workshops. So, I decided I need to spend more time away from the jewellery bench and started to volunteer with a local Harm Reduction Drugs Service. I had always felt a desire to support those often seen as less deserving in society, so this was a really good fit for me.
"Fast-forward a couple of years and I’d retired my jewellery business and was working in a men's prison as a drug and alcohol support worker. Due to the stigma around mental health, I’d found myself specialising in working with those inmates who were considered to have dual diagnosis (both substance misuse and mental health difficulties).
"I loved this area of work and after a couple of years started to look at what my options were to advance in the field. I saw these incredible jobs that I wanted to apply for but couldn’t as they all had the same essential qualification which I was not familiar with and certainly didn’t have… an RMN. Having ascertained this acronym stood for Registered Mental Health Nurse, I researched further and was giddy with excitement at the breadth and depth of the role. I had to apply to train.
"As a student nurse I started to get that ‘coming home feeling’, being a mental health nurse really dovetailed my values and the way I wanted to be in the world. I felt a huge privilege and responsibility caring for people when they were at their most vulnerable. Returning to study also relit an academic fire in me. I was fascinated by some of the theoretical debates around how we conceptualise mental health and define mental health nursing. I was curious as to how policy and practice changed and the ways in which research findings were translated and implemented in practice.
"From qualifying I looked for every opportunity to integrate research activity into my nursing practice, I wanted to carve out a clinical academic career but not a traditional one. I did not want to be based in a university, I wanted to be a nurse in the NHS who was utilising and undertaking research activity to respond to practice led demands. Whilst this was not a well-trodden path, it was one I was determined to travel. Fast forward again, 10 years this time, and I’m making it happen.
"I am currently the Implementation and Research Nurse lead for CAMHS, I work closely with the Head of Nursing and Quality, Nurse Consultant and Matrons to facilitate an academically underpinned, clinical evidence base that supports the development and dissemination of expert nursing practice across the directorate. I’m undertaking my PhD part time and I am one of 64 senior nurses nationally selected to work on a Department of Health and Social Care programme to improve research capacity and capability building across the nursing workforce. The role I do is an unconventional one but it’s one I believe more nurses should be undertaking.
"I am keen to think about how we develop opportunities for nurses to drive research both in relation to the questions being posed and the methods being utilised. Teams and organisations often report different experiences in sustaining the same intervention.
"Policymakers and practitioners need to understand how and why programmes work and don’t work in different contexts, so they are better equipped to make decisions about which programmes or policies to use and how to adapt them to local contexts. Such understanding is arguably vital when considering how an intervention is sustained in ‘real world practice’ and I believe nurses are well placed to contribute to and take a lead in answering those questions as part of our pursuit to deliver high quality, evidence-based nursing practice.
"For me research and nursing are irrevocably intertwined, I believe that being involved in research makes me a better nurse. I believe the core of being a mental health nurse is the desire to make a positive difference to the lives of the people and communities I serve and being research active is integral to me in achieving that aim."
