This year's Spring Conference is based on the theme 'Learning as a Team'. The conference is aimed at an audience of paediatric and neonatal trainees at all levels of training, ANNPs and AHPs.
Meet the Speakers
Dr Mhairi Dupré, Radiology Registrar, Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow
Talk: Radiology Case Studies
Mhairi is a senior registrar in paediatric radiology working at the RHC, Glasgow. Particular interests are in neonatal and MSK pathology, fluoroscopy and ultrasound. She will be leaving the UK in August to undergo fellowships in Australia and New Zealand.
Moriam Mustapha, Lead Neonatal Dietitian, London Neonatal Operational Delivery Network
Talk: Dietetics in Qatar
Moriam has more than 15 years of extensive clinical experience in paediatric and neonatal nutrition through the NHS and abroad. She is passionate about neonatal and infant nutrition, and hopes to work towards equitable and standardised nutritional care across the network.
Moriam is a member of the Neonatal Dietitians Interest Group - NDiG (subgroup of the British Dietetics Association). She is also a committee member of the аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø - аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø, and the Allied Health & Public Affairs committees of the European Society of Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition - ESPGHAN.
Dr Helen Brotherton, Consultant Paediatrician/Neonatologist, Victoria Hospital, Fife, Scotland and Clinical Assistant Professor, MRC Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Talk: Kangaroo Care in West Africa
Dr Brotherton is a Consultant Paediatrician with clinical interests in Infectious Diseases and Neonatology. She is also a Clinical Assistant professor at LSHTM, where she undertook a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship and PhD from 2016 to 2021 and continues to research topics related to Newborn Health and Infections in West Africa. Research interests include small and sick newborn care in low-resource settings, kangaroo care, hospital acquired infections and antimicrobial resistance.
Adele Farrow, Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, St Michaels Hospital, Bristol
Talk: The KaCooN Project: Introducing Kangaroo Position in Neonatal Transport in the UK
Adele has been an ANNP for more than 10 years, working for the NEST transport team for
over eight years. She was awarded an NNA Scholarship to travel to Sweden and explore the concept of Kangaroo position in neonatal transport. She has since successfully introduced the concept on the NEST transport team.
Dr Amish Chinoy, Paediatric Endocrinology & Metabolic Bone Disease Consultant, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Talk: Metabolic Bone Disease in Prematurity – It’s not just about phosphate!
Dr Amish Chinoy is a paediatric endocrinologist working at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, with a special interest in metabolic bone disease and musculoskeletal health. As well as working within the clinical services of paediatric endocrinology, metabolic bone disease and diabetes, Dr Chinoy is actively involved with research, having completed his MD in NF1 musculoskeletal health, and leading in several industry-sponsored research trials. One of his particular interests lies in metabolic bone disease of prematurity, to improve long-term outcomes through research in this condition.
Jackie Hird, Foster Carer
Talk: Safeguarding Infants: The Bigger Picture
Jackie Hird was, until recently, the Director of Joanna Project, a charity in Leeds that works with women trapped by addiction and street sex work. She was a mental health Occupational Therapist, an Antenatal teacher and is now a Foster Carer.
She says she will go almost anywhere and speak to anyone to achieve a wider and deeper understanding of the issues and challenges faced the women Joanna Project serves, including the pain of not being able to care for their babies.
Dr Graham Thornton, Paediatric Safeguarding Registrar, Royal United Hospital, Bath
Safeguarding Infants: Registrar’s Perspective
Graham is a General Paediatric Registrar in the Severn Deanery with a special interest in Safeguarding. Having spent the last year pioneering a Safeguarding Registrar role at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, he now works as a Safeguarding Fellow across Bath, NE Somerset and Wiltshire. Alongside his clinical work Graham's research interests include contribution to the RCPCH manual on Child Sexual Assault. Inspired by the work on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), he is passionate to see Paediatricians acknowledge the unquestionable role of children's social environment on their medical outcomes.
Marie Clare Tully, Hector Tully’s Mother
Talk: Parental View: The impact of good multidisciplinary care
Hector was born at 23 week in November 2021. He experienced many complications due his prematurity and has had 15 operations. He has spent a total of 260 days in the
Neo Nata Unit and in the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital. "He is an amazing wee boy who has overcome so much." Chief Executive, Columba 1400 Former Chair, SiMBA Charity.
Hilary Cruickshank, Clinical Specialist Neonatal Physiotherapist, Simpson Centre for Reproductive Health, Edinburgh
Talk: How to get involved with аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø, NNA and the AHP groups
Hilary has over 20 years of experience working in acute neonates in Edinburgh as a clinical specialist physiotherapist in neonates, working on a large tertiary centre where she is involved in preterm assessment on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and jointly leads the two-year outpatient follow-up program for high-risk infants. She is the project lead for the Scottish Neonatal AHP workforce review as well as the current AHP representative on the аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø Executive committee and аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø QI group.
"I am passionate about looking after the whole family and not just the baby through their journey in the neonatal unit and beyond. I am also an advocate for early intervention to promote better outcomes for all our neonatal babies long term."
Rá½¹isá½·n Mckeon-Carter, Chair of NNA and Neonatal Nurse Consultant, University Hospitals NHS Trust Plymouth
Talk: How to get involved with аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø, NNA and the AHP groups
Rόisίn has been a Neonatal Nurse Consultant since 2010 in a tertiary NICU and was the first nurse to be appointed as Clinical Director for the Neonatal Services in the UK completing two terms from 2013-19. In Rόisίn’s nurse consultant role, they lead a 20 cot NICU, 14 cot Neonatal Transitional Care (NTC) ward and a Neonatal Outreach Service (NOS) and works collaboratively with the South West Perinatal Service and South West Academic Health Science. Their focus is on developing the neonatal services ensuring safe and sustainable staffing and including developing advanced level nurses.
Rá½¹isá½·n’s passion is to keep the baby and parents/family at the centre of the service and have an ethos of Family Integrated Care (FICare). In 2017, Rá½¹isá½·n was a member of the аÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Íø group that produced ‘A Framework for Neonatal Transitional Care’ which informs all neonatal units in UK. Rá½¹isá½·n is particularly proud of their involvement with the NNA and has been a member since 1990, became a trustee in 2014 and chair in 2021.
Live workshops
Delegates joining us live in Edinburgh will have the opportunity to join us for one of two workshops.
Michelle Sweeting, Neonatal Speech & Language Therapist & Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Neonatology Allied Health Professionals Advisor, Broomfield Hospital, Essex
Workshop: How to present your work
Michelle is a neonatal specialist Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) at Broomfield Hospital (Mid & South Essex NHS Foundation Trust) in Chelmsford where she has established a new SLT service provision. Michelle is the GIRFT Neonatology Allied Health Professional Advisor and has a keen interest in quality improvement and developing neonatal services which have allied health professionals embedded as part of multi-disciplinary team. Michelle is currently the deputy chair of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists Clinical Excellence Network and is an SLT representative for the Allied Health Professionals neonatal conference committee.
Kelly Harvey, Senior Lead Nurse/Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool
Workshop: How to present your work
Kelly is currently working as the Senior Lead Nurse for the North West Neonatal Network and has a long history of neonatal nursing latterly as an ANNP. She says she is privileged to be the neonatal nursing advisor for the national GIRFT Neonatology project and a member of the National Neonatal Nurses Association Executive committee.
Dr Andrew Brunton, Consultant Neonatologist, Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow
Workshop: How to get and pass a neonatal grid interview
Following paediatric training in both Liverpool and Glasgow, Andrew has been a Consultant
Neonatologist at The Royal Hospital in Glasgow since 2020. He created the Scottish Neonatal GRID Mock Interview Programme in 2018 and this has gradually expanded to a UK wide Neonatal GRID Mock interview programme that runs one week before the CSAC interviews. The programme is extremely popular with both interviewers and interviewees with trainees regularly giving excellent feedback about the process.