Bubbly, outgoing and always smiling.

Bubbly, outgoing and always smiling.

This is how colleagues describe Libby Owens, who has been a Healthcare Assistant (HCA) with our Milton Keynes District Nursing Team since 2005.

Libby is now our Nurse Cadet Champion and HCA lead for Nurse Cadets within the service and has worked with the senior management team on how to best support Nurse Cadets in teams.

Prior to this she was with the Community Health Access Team for five years before this team was subsumed into other teams.

“I love my role. I love the variety and enjoy caring for people. I think caring was always in my nature even as a child and I was a carer for many years before joining the NHS,” she says.

Libby moved to Milton Keynes from Liverpool with her husband in 1979 to join a sister who was feeling homesick. They were only going to stay for five years but ended up raising their family in Milton Keynes. In the end Libby’s parents, her brother and four of her other five sisters moved to Milton Keynes.

She describes herself as a stay-at-home mum who raised two boys before feeling it was time to look for work in the care sector.

She found her niche when she joined the District Nursing Team and while she had the opportunities to train as a nurse, the timing was never quite right. “I’ve never looked back with the District Nursing Team. They are a lovely and supportive team with fantastic managers. I’ve had many opportunities to do my nursing training but the time was never quite right. You can’t turn the clock back,” she says.

“I think the opportunities for Healthcare Assistants now are so much more varied than when I first started.

“Now we can take blood, we can do compression bandages, we can do catheters and we do all the observations. It’s far more than just providing care, though I’m sure people still think that’s all it is.”

With her years of experience, Libby was the obvious candidate to act as a Nurse Cadet Champion.

“The Nurse Cadet programme is such a fantastic idea for young people who are doing their health and social care A-levels. I act as a mentor and a buddy and hope my enthusiasm rubs off on these young people to make a career in the care profession. They will learn how to do minor observations and generally how to talk with patients.

“I feel I’m influencing the next generation of carers and nurses and I hope they enjoy the experience when they start on 7 October.”

Libby’s manager is Community Nursing Service Manager Lorraine Gardiner who says of her: “Libby is incredibly proactive, nothing is ever too much and she is always smiling. She will be instrumental in sharing her knowledge and promoting a career in Healthcare to our future nurses and will be heavily involved in the Nurse Cadet programme for District Nursing as we move forward.”