Hello, my name is Ian Joy and I am the Executive Director of Nursing at Newcastle Hospitals.
I am proud to work alongside my Associate Directors of Nursing colleagues to ensure that we can provide nursing leadership to support our workforce to deliver and maintain the highest standard of clinical care and the best experience for those who use our services.
I trained as a nurse here in Newcastle gaining great experience through a wide range of clinical placements across the region before qualifying as a registered nurse in 2002 working in surgical urology at the Freeman Hospital.
Before qualifying and ever since, I have been particularly passionate about delivering high quality urgent and emergency care.
I feel privileged to have worked in a number of emergency care units across the North East for 12 years. I began my emergency nursing career as a staff nurse, being promoted to charge nurse, progressing to Advanced Clinical Practitioner and then Matron.
Despite working under often very challenging conditions I loved working alongside like mind colleagues in such a fast paced, diverse and unpredictable area knowing that what I did contributed to giving patients and their families a positive experience.
I also spent time as an Associate Lecturer for post-graduate advanced practice in emergency care. This gave me the opportunity to not only develop my own teaching skills but also watch students I taught flourish, developing both professionally and personally. I felt a great sense of achievement being able to support the next generation of nurses.
It also helped me to understand how important it is to ensure robust education and training is in place to support registrants to work within the necessary frameworks of the NMC Code of Practice.
Healthcare Leadership
In 2015 I had a complete change in career direction having undertaken a MSc in Healthcare Leadership which gave me the time and space to think about my future nursing career.
I decided to return to Newcastle Hospitals as Matron for Urology Services and then progressed to Senior Nurse for Nursing and Midwifery Staffing in 2016. I have subsequently held the role of Associate Director of Nursing and Deputy Chief Nurse before taking on the role of Executive Director of Nursing in April 2024.
Safe staffing
Safe staffing is essential for the delivery of high quality and safe care as well as staff wellbeing and is a significant challenge for all Trusts across the country. This is a real passion for me and I am committed to continuously improving and strengthening safer staffing across the organisation, building on the experience I gained in my nursing and midwifery staffing role.
From a national perspective I am a national Chief Nursing Officer Safe Staffing Fellow having completed the first cohort of this programme and support safe staffing workstreams locally, regionally and nationally.
I am extremely proud to be a Nurse and feel honoured and humbled to be the Executive Director of Nursing at the Newcastle Hospitals.
