Nurse of the Year winners 2024

Edith Donnelly

Advanced nurse practitioner, heart failure 

Southern Health and Social Care Trust

Edith’s nomination focuses upon her outstanding achievements in improving care through establishing in July 2022 an advanced nurse practitioner-led service for patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction [HFpEF]. Edith recognised a gap in service provision for people living with this type of heart failure and identified the need to treat them early to improve their outcomes. This group of patients are now being correctly diagnosed and offered appropriate care, with Edith providing holistic and person-centred assessment, treatment, education and follow-up. Analysis of the one-year morbidity of patients with HFpEF, comparing those known to Edith’s service (102 patients) with those who were not (58 patients), shows how hospital admissions due to heart failure were higher in the latter group at 40%, compared with 19% for those being treated by Edith.

Furthermore, 74% those who attended the HFpEF service were prescribed appropriate guideline-directed medical therapy, compared to only 5% of those who did not. Edith’s nominator praises how patients feel able to engage with her service and make decisions about their care. She also commends how Edith “worked tirelessly and passionately for this group of patients, seeing the human story behind every person who walked through her door” and practising “with knowledge, compassion and empathy”. The judging panel was impressed with Edith’s passion for nursing, her ability to identify and address a previously unmet need, and the clear evidence of her success. It also noted how Edith’s achievements provide further confirmation of the exceptional contribution made by advanced nurse practitioners across Northern Ireland.