RCN Fellowship honour for Dr Claire Chatterton

Dr Claire Chatterton of the OU's School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care has been awarded Fellowship of the RCN (Royal College of Nursing) at this year’s RCN Awards.

The RCN Awards celebrate the hard work and dedication of outstanding members, and those individuals who have made a significant contribution to the nursing profession. Fellowships recognise exceptional practitioners, researchers, educationalists and leaders who share the RCN’s commitment to advancing the art and science of nursing and improving health care.

Claire joined the OU in 2003 as an Associate Lecturer, then as a Programme Tutor for Nursing and is currently a Staff Tutor based in the northwest of England, as well as being Nations Manager, managing the Health, Wellbeing and Social Care team in the north of England.

Claire says: “I'm humbled to be awarded the fellowship. It's a huge honour and very much appreciated. As a nurse historian, I'm particularly pleased to receive this in the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife and during the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. In my work on nursing history I have endeavoured to link my research to contemporary practice as I firmly believe that in the words of a former American politician, Adlai E. Stevenson: ‘We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.’”

Nurse historian Claire is a dual-qualified adult and mental health nurse, and served eight years as Chair of the RCN’s History of Nursing Forum, for which she received the RCN Award of Merit. Since 2014 she has been a steering committee member of the UK Association for the History of Nursing, organising and speaking at their annual colloquia and publishing articles in their annual bulletin.

In 2017, the University of Virginia honoured Claire with the Agnes Dillon Randolph Award for her sustained contributions to the history of nursing – only the second UK nurse to be granted this prestigious honour, following RCN President Anne Marie Rafferty.

In 2018 she was the academic advisor to the OU/BBC co-produced series, The NHS: A People’s History.

Read more about the RCN Awards.

Read more about this year’s RCN Fellows.

Find our more about Nursing at the OU.