Angela’s story: from patient to Professional Lead for our Paediatric Liaison Service

Meet Angela. She’s the amazing Professional Lead for our Paediatric Liaison Service at Sheffield Children’s, and also a previous patient!

Angela has over 30 years of nursing experience and started working at the Trust as a Student Health Visitor in 2011, before promptly moving across to Paediatric Liaison Service as a Nurse and progressing into a leadership role. However, Angela’s story at Sheffield Children’s actually begins over 50 years ago, as she was previously treated here as a newborn baby.

After developing rhesus disease, Angela was born via emergency caesarean at 36 weeks at Northern General Hospital. Rhesus disease occurs when a mother with RhD negative blood has been exposed to RhD positive blood, usually during a previous pregnancy, in a process called sensitisation. After sensitisation, the body recognises the RhD positive blood cells and produces specific antibodies to destroy them. As Angela’s mum had previously been exposed to RhD positive blood when giving birth to Angela’s twin older sisters, she had developed these specific antibodies, which began to attack Angela in the womb. Rhesus disease is now less common, as we can often give an anti-D injection to prevent these antibodies from being produced, but this treatment was not readily available at the time. Angela said: “My mum went into early labour with me. She also had something called placenta previa, a condition where the placenta lies over the cervix.”

Angela was immediately transferred to Sheffield Children’s, where the team promptly called for an exchange blood transfusion. Angela then developed necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) which is a condition that can affect newborn babies, where tissue in the bowel (small and large intestines) becomes inflamed. Babies born premature or sick have more immature bowels, which means that they are more likely to get NEC than babies born healthy or term.

Angela said: “Surgeons told my parents that I had a 5% chance of survival. I was at Sheffield Children’s for months after that and had a temporary colostomy after having some of my bowel removed. However, against the odds, I’ve made it! I think that’s due to the expertise of those who were working at Sheffield Children’s.”

Now, Angela loves spending time with her two children, aged 16 and 19, and three fabulous dogs, Molly, Charlie, and Poppy. She said: “At the minute we only have our three dogs, but we actually also foster for Shih Tzu Action Rescue. We’ve had a lot of dogs that we’ve looked after and found suitable homes. It’s really rewarding, and my children get involved in that. We do it because we want to help!”

Angela had experience in NHS Leadership positions prior to her time at Sheffield Children’s. She said: “Before working at Sheffield Children’s. I’ve worked in senior posts within the NHS for most of my career. I worked as Public Health Lead and I even helped set up community cardiac rehabilitation centres across Sheffield.”

Angela now works in our Paediatric Liaison Service which is based across five sites in Sheffield including Sheffield Children’s. Angela’s role sees her working with different hospitals and partner organisations in the city as well as with health visitors and school nurses in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and Bassetlaw to make sure children and their families receive appropriate care and support.

She said: “I’ve focused on modernising things, as a lot of the ways we were working were labour intensive. There was a lot of paper involved. I wanted to make sure that everything was electronic. A lot of my drive has been around service improvement, and we’ve worked really hard collaborating with the Service Improvement Team.”

“It’s a privilege to work here, it’s a lovely place to work. I feel so much gratitude towards the NHS, Sheffield Children’s in particular. Here, the compassion that colleagues show when looking after patients and each other is amazing. I also have an interest in child safeguarding as well, the work that we do supports that too!”

Angela remains grateful for the efforts of the team at Sheffield Children’s during her time here as a patient. She said: “It was Mr Zachary who did the surgery, and he was quite a pioneering Surgeon at the time. I have actually been in contact with his son, who is a Consultant in America, and now we’re friends on Facebook! I wanted him to know how much his father helped me. I think I’d just like to say a massive thank you to everyone.”

We’d like to thank Angela for sharing her story, and for coming back to Sheffield Children’s to work with us!