Killaloe nurse Charlotte Gleeson will travel to New York later this year to observe practice at one of the world’s top cancer centres.
Charlotte, (33), who works at University Hospital Limerick, is off to the world-renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan for a week’s clinical observation in October after winning the inaugural Sheila Clarke Travel Bursary at the annual conference of the Irish Association for Nurses in Oncology (IANO).
The award is worth €2,000 and is named in honour of the late Sheila Clarke, a pioneer in the development of cancer nursing as a specialty in Ireland and a former president of the IANO.
Charlotte was nominated for the Innovation in Clinical Practice Award by her clinical nurse manager Cathleen Osborne and by Catherine Hand, nurse services manager, cancer services, University Hospital Limerick.
The award recognises not just Charlotte’s excellent care but also the manner in which she has driven innovation in clinical practice for the benefit of cancer patients in Limerick, across the region and around the country.
She dedicated the award to all her colleagues at UHL and in the IANO who had worked on the projects with her.
Charlotte took a leadership role in an initiative educating cancer patients and community nurses on how to properly clean and care for CVAD (central venous access device) lines at home or in a community setting – sparing chemotherapy patients in, for example, west Clare or west Limerick, long trips into Limerick city for a check that might only take 10 minutes.
The initiative was rolled out across Limerick, Clare and Tipperary in January of this year and Charlotte said the feedback around improving patients quality of life had been very positive.
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.