A NURSE has outlined her remarkable journey into health and care research at the University of South Wales and the pivotal moments that shaped her path.
Professor Carolyn Wallace has an extensive background in health and care provision and research and leads the Health, Care and Well-being Research and Innovation group at the University of South Wales.
Background in healthcare
Professor Wallace explained: "I started off doing my nurse training in the days when there were no nursing degrees.
"I trained at Cardiff and I worked briefly at University Hospital Wales as a staff nurse afterwards, then came to Neville Hall and worked there for about a year.
"It was around medicine and cardiology, and I liked the complexity of medicine."
After getting married and relocating to Swindon, Professor Wallace became a 'ward sister,' someone that manages a ward of more than 30 beds, by the time she was around 25-years of age.
After achieving her initial career goals, Professor Wallace changed her trajectory while juggling her home life with children, pursuing higher education and completing an Open University degree and a Master's in Interprofessional Studies.
This led to her involvement in research projects, which included developing integrated services for older people and exploring health and social care service integration through her PhD.
Professor Wallace said her thesis was an 'Exploration of Health and Social Care Service Integration in a Deprived South Wales Area,' which she said was an extensive and enormous piece of work that changed her life and resulted in some changes in service delivery.
She added: "I compared day services, hospital outpatients in frail older people, day hospitals, day centres, integrated day-care, which I developed with reablement across health and social care in Blaenau Gwent.
University of South Wales
In 2005, Professor Wallace joined the University of South Wales as a senior lecturer, writing a book on interprofessional working and receiving mentorship from research colleagues.
The esteemed researcher won several accolades throughout her career, receiving the Florence Nightingale travel scholarship where she travelled to Italy and Scotland to conduct research, and received the Queen's Nursing Institute award for innovation.
She gradually built her expertise in grant writing and research, becoming an associate professor and then a professor in Community Health and Care services.
In the last five years, Professor Carolyn Wallace has been the Associate Director of PRIME Centre Wales, a trustee/chair of Age Cymru Gwent and founding director of the Wales School for Social Prescribing Research which she said "is a way in which we can support people to enable them to improve their well being. "
In this role, the professor said: "It's about ensuring that the next generation have opportunities and I've learned from my experience that yes, there were people who were helpful and supportive, but actually the infrastructure around nurse researchers isn't as strong as in other professional groups.
"It has been really important for me in my career to support people and to give them opportunities, not just nurses, but other people in other professions as well.
"That has been a real privilege."
Social prescribing is an approach which connects people to their communities to help them better manage their health and well-being in order to help to prevent health and social issues such as loneliness, social isolation, anxiety, and the impact of debt..
Professor Wallace outlined that although there are social prescribing approaches in place across Wales, she emphasised that, "sometimes we forget about that neighbourhood activity, like a knitting or walking group, and the funding they need which is really crucial in order to deliver a preventative measure which stops people in their tracks of getting worse."
She added: "There are opportunities out there that we can use and we need to develop that prevention model in order to support people’.
"We need to think of the whole system and that everybody has a role to play."
Carolyn Wallace, together with Dr Simon Newstead, developed a glossary for social prescribing terms, called the Splossary Wales to improve communication for professionals and members of the public.
Family matters
After speaking with health Visitors in Wales, Professor Wallace and her team developed a standardised assessment tool for health visitors, to create a family resilience assessment called The FRAIT (Family Resilience Assessment Instrument and Tool).
After analysing the data from the FRAIT, researchers and advisors concluded that completing the family resilience assessment at birth could enable health visitors to predict the school readiness of a child.
Professor Wallace said: "In 2016, The FRAIT was included within Welsh Government policy, the Healthy Child Wales policy.
"So all health visitors in Wales, as of 2017, have used The FRAIT with every family with children aged 5 years and under."
Now, it is also being developed in countries such as India, with cultural sensitivity changes for use there.
Carolyn emphasized the importance of collaboration and capacity building, working with teams across various programs and supporting the next generation of researchers.
Health and Care Awards
Stories like Carolyn's are invaluable to the community in South Wales, which can often fly under-the-radar.
Members of the community will be celebrated and recognised at this year's Health and Care Awards 2024, taking place in December.
There's still time to sponsor one of the awards, however spaces are limited.
To find out more information, contact chris.fox@localiq.co.uk.
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