Patron
Dame Yvonne Moores qualified as a nurse and midwife in Southampton prior to ward sister appointments in Winchester and London.
Whilst in Winchester, she attended a King’s Fund nurse leadership programme which impacted on her expectations and subsequent career.
She held nurse leadership positions in London and Manchester before her appointment as Chief Nursing Officer for Wales. After six years in the Principality, she moved to Scotland to take up the corresponding position north of the border. In both positions, her focus and that of her team was on increasing the influence of nurses and the development of clinical practice through nurse strategies agreed with both Governments. Her move back to England coincided with the Chief Nursing Officer post and that of the Director of Nursing for the NHS falling vacant and she was appointed to both posts, the former being based in London and the latter in Leeds. She also held the added brief for Quality in the NHS.
As Chief Nursing Officer, she kept in touch with clinical developments through her Practice Advisory Group which comprised nurses drawn from a variety of clinical settings. She also continued her practice of working as a staff nurse for a week each year in a hospital or community setting. Much was achieved for nursing and midwifery during her seven year tenure at the Department of Health but she also secured ministerial commitment to the first ever Quality Framework for the NHS. The resultant First Class Service white paper led directly to the introduction of Clinical Governance, NICE and the Commission for Health Improvement subsequently renamed as the Care Quality Commission. With strong ministerial backing she was able to extend the role of nurses including Nurse Prescribing and the creation of NHS Direct. Upon her retirement, Yvonne was appointed as Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the Council of the University of Southampton.
During her six year term of office, she held the position of Deputy Chair of the Committee of University Chairs and was also a member of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education which was tasked with ensuring the future leadership capacity in Higher Education. She subsequently served as a Pro-Chancellor at Bournemouth University for eight years.
Honorary degrees were conferred on her by Southampton, Bournemouth, Bradford, Huddersfield, Central England, Portsmouth, Northumbria and De Montfort Universities along with honorary fellowships from the University of Wales College of Medicine, the Queen’s Nursing Institute and the Faculty of Public Health.
She is a Companion of the Institute of Management. Appointed in 2004 as the first female Non-Executive Director of the National House Building Council, Yvonne eventually served for eleven years as Chair of the Trustees of the Company’s Pension Fund.
Dame Yvonne has a longstanding commitment to Global Health. Whilst chair of WHO’s Global Advisory Group on Nursing in Geneva, she helped ensure that strong nursing resolutions were passed by the World Health Assembly. From 2004 to 2014, she was a Non-Executive Director and eventually Vice Chair of Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and was in a position to assist in the creation of the Poole Africa Link which fosters health care and education initiatives in South Sudan and Uganda. Since its inception in 2001, Dame Yvonne has travelled to Thailand each year in her capacity as an international advisor to the Princess Srinagarindra Foundation which selects the “World Nurse of the Year”.
She is currently the Chair of the Interim Steering Committee of the Wessex Global Health Network which aims to assist academics and NHS professionals in the region to impact maximally on the health of the world’s population. In 2017 she was the sixth recipient in 25 years of Sigma Theta Tau’s International lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her “extraordinary contribution to the health and wellbeing of world citizens”.
