Sarah qualified as a nurse in 1994 and spent much of her career working in Trauma and orthopaedics in a variety of NHS roles across the Midlands. In 2004 Sarah began her leadership roles in 1998, and moved into senior Nursing leadership roles in 2004 within the NHS, whilst maintaining a clinical hands on role throughout. In 2017 Sarah moved into the Charity sector as a Director of Clinical Services at John Taylor Hospice and saw the organisation through a move from a Community Interest Company to a Charity. In the middle of the pandemic Sarah was appointed as Director of Clinical Services over Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice and John Taylor Hospice, which then became known as The Hospice Charity Partnership, and led the clinical teams through the merger to emerge as Birmingham Hospice, the primary provider of palliative and end of life care across Birmingham.
Sarah is passionate about challenging the norm and creating innovative services that meet the needs of the people we serve, no matter their background. She particularly enjoys building teams, helping people work in roles that enable them to really shine and loves service development and trying new ideas. She has led the development of a Bone Infection Unit in her NHS days and led on the introduction of Personal Health Budgets at the end of life, along with a 24/7 service created during the COVID pandemic that brought all four hospices together across Birmingham and Solihull. This is now a sustainable model sharing referral mechanisms and bed management cross the system.
Sarah cares deeply about end of life as it affects every single person and believes that ensuring outstanding end of life care should be a right for all, just as maternity services are. Death is not a failure, but poor care is, and Sarah is proud to lead CQC rated outstanding clinical services on both sites.
