The UKONS Board

The members of the UKONS committee are:

Sally Campanali

Sally began her nursing career in Belfast in the 70s, choosing to specialise in Orthopaedics for which N.I. had developed a degree of expertise as an unfortunate product of “The Troubles”   On moving to London, Sally was lured into the emerging speciality of Cardiothoracic Surgery, eventually holding a variety of senior nursing positions. This in turn led her onto a career as a nursing consultant in the commissioning of new hospitals or centres. One such was the B.M. Birla Heart Research Centre in India where Sally remained as Matron for one year.

In 1990 Sally was required to return as her family was moving to Italy and there she continued in her role as a consultant for a variety of organisations. However in the early 90’s Sally was asked to commission a Palliative Care Unit and loved the speciality so much that again she stayed on as Matron until another family transfer brought her back to Northern Ireland in 1997. Here, Sally I worked as Clinical Services Manager in the Marie Curie Centre Belfast for 5 years before moving to work in the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre in 2001, where she remains to this day. 

Maggie Crowe

Maggie is currently working as consultant nurse and lead cancer nurse at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. Maggie has had over 15 years experience in a number of oncology posts. Maggie is currently a member of the National Chemotherapy Advisory Group and has been a member of the National Cancer Nursing Advisory Group. Key interests for Maggie include knowledge and competencies of nurses caring for cancer patients in non-cancer areas. She is currently principal investigator for a multi-centre study investigating the supportive care needs of people following potentially curative cancer treatment.

Debbie Fenlon

Debbie Fenlon is currently working as a senior research fellow in the Cancer, Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group at the University of Southampton. Her area of interest is to research symptoms following treatment for breast cancer in order to help improve understanding of symptoms and their impact on women’s lives and to find ways of helping to manage difficult symptoms. She won a CRUK fellowship to undertake a PhD, which was a randomised, controlled trial of relaxation to reduce hot flushes after breast cancer. Prior to this she worked as a lecturer in cancer care at the Institute of Cancer Research and as a clinical nurse specialist in breast cancer at the Royal Marsden Hospital. She has contributed to a number of text books on cancer nursing and co-authored a book for women with breast cancer.

Ann Fox

Ann is Nurse Director for the Northern Cancer Network. She has worked in cancer/palliative services for most of her career in a variety of clinical and managerial roles. Ann has been involved in many service developments locally e.g., Out of Hours Palliative Care Services and Nurse Led Chemotherapy Services, (which remain an area of personal interest). Ann is Co-chair of the National Network Nurse Directors forum and represents nursing on the National Chemotherapy Advisory Group. Ann is passionate about providing the best services possible for patients and their families and believes her role at NCN influences the local and national agenda particularly from a nursing and clinical support professionals’ perspective. The focus of Ann’s role is to ensure the patient perspective and experience is considered as central to every service delivery and development.

Claire Kelly

Claire is Director of Nursing and Care Services at Hartlepool & District Hospice. She has been in this role for 2 years and prior to this role she was a Network Nurse Director for 7 years in the North East of England. Claire has a wealth of experience in cancer nursing. She specialised in haematology in 1990 and then pursued her nursing career in oncology holding Sister / Ward Manager and Nurse Specialist posts in Leeds and at Christies in Manchester. Claire worked in Pakistan for two years where she led the establishment of nursing services and education at the first national Cancer Hospital.

Claire is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Teesside. She has a Masters in Public Health and has a keen interest in inequalities. She is also passionate about nursing leadership and contributes to Leadership Development Programmes through her role as an Associate with the Centre for Development of Healthcare Policy and Practice at Leeds University.  

Claire is a founder member, Board Member and Treasurer of UKONS. She ensures that the finance of UKONS is managed efficiently and effectively and also contributes to the broader UKONS agenda as an active and motivated Board member. She still spends time in clinical practice ensuring that she represents real issues in her various roles which in turn ensures the UKONS Board serves the needs of its members.

Chrissie Lane

Chrissie Lane is currently working as the Macmillan Cancer Nurse Consultant within NHS Highland.Chrissie has over 22 years working within cancer care in a wide variety of clinical and managerial roles. Now having moved to the Highlands from Yorkshire there is a fascinating challenge to deliver high quality cancer services to remote and rural populations. Key areas of interest for Chrissie are: developing the leadership potential of all nurses within cancer care; developing nurse led services which are focused on the needs of patients and their carers; and ensuring that nurses are skilled and capable to deliver interventions based upon good evidence. Given the rural landscape of the Highlands, working to deliver cancer care closer to people’s homes is her next big challenge.

Michele Pengelly

Michele is a specialist nurse for supportive care in the Velindre Cancer Centre in South Wales and has worked in clinical oncology both in the public and voluntary sectors for almost 20 years. Michele’s current role is to provide specialist information and supportive care for cancer patients and their families admitted to the acute oncology setting and she also has a considerable remit for providing education, support and training for staff. Her role provides an excellent example of the collaborative working partnership between the charity Cancer Care Cymru and Velindre NHS Trust, who jointly fund the role.

Central to Michele’s nursing philosophy is a passionate and deep belief that patients should not be cared for in isolation but within the context of their family unit and therefore any care must be both patient and family focused. She currently leads many patient centred initiatives. Michele believes that membership of UKONS will provide cancer nurses at all stages of their careers with an excellent forum to positively influence and contribute to today’s political healthcare agenda.

Paul Trevatt

Paul has worked in Cancer and Palliative Care Nursing for over seventeen years in both specialist and generalist roles and across a variety of clinical settings from primary to secondary and tertiary care.  In his role as Nurse Director for the North East London Cancer Network he provides direction and leadership to all nurses and allied healthcare professionals involved with cancer patients across the network and healthcare boundaries.

Paul is a visiting lecturer at King’s College London and City University London where he teaches on cancer policy and nursing leadership to both masters and degree students. He has published a number of papers and articles in professional journals and has presented at both European and international cancer nursing conferences.

He has contributed to a number of national work streams and initiatives which have included building the case for clinical nurse specialists, BME cancer challenges and improving the cancer patient experience.  In 2008 he was invited by Professor Mike Richards to join the national cancer equality initiative advisory group which feeds directly into the Cancer Reform Strategy.

Paul believes passionately in the strength of cancer nursing and that UKONS as a professional body has the ability to influence both practice and policy at local and national level.

Cheryl Vidall 

Cheryl has been a trained nurse for over 20 years, with expertise in Colorectal Cancer. She was a CNS in Exeter for 5 years, before working for Healthcare at Home. Her particular interest has been in functional issues following treatment for recal cancers, most specifically sexual function. She has spoken nationally and internationally on this subject. She has also chaired the South West colorectal nurses forum, been nursing governor on the foundation trust board and set up user groups in the south west. She worked for the Peninsula Cancer Network on a secondment for 6 months. Cheryl is delighted to be on the board of UKONS, to represent nurses working in the Independent sector.

Isabel White

Isabel is a Cancer Research UK Nursing Research Training Fellow at the European Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey. Isabel has worked in cancer care since 1984 and was a member of the DOH Cancer Taskforce and Nursing Advisory Group as well as The RCNs Cancer Nursing Framework working group. Isabel believes her contribution to UKONS, apart from a warped sense of humour (which of course is essential!), is to try to improve the nursing contribution to psychosocial assessment and care for people affected by cancer.

Annie Young

Annie works as nurse director, 3 Counties Cancer Network - Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and South Worcestershire, steering the direction of cancer and supportive and palliative care services in this very striking part of the country. She started working life as a biochemist but her varied nursing career included general medicine and ITU before specialising in oncology, firstly as chemotherapy nurse and ultimately in research, both quantitative and qualitative. Annie was research nurse manager in the Institute for Cancer Studies at Birmingham University where she gained an MRC Clinical Fellowship and was instrumental in starting up a home chemotherapy and a gene therapy programme. Annie retains her main research interests - informed consent, nurse-driven clinical trials and thrombosis in malignancy - during the week but is often seen tandeming round Herefordshire at weekends.