The Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care is proud to present the latest event in our Inaugural Lecture Series.

The event is a celebration of our new professors, Mary Malone and Tommy Dickinson, who will present an overview of their contribution to their fields.

This event is free and open to members of the public, please register via Ticket Tailor.

Doors for this event will open at 17:45 (BST), with the lectures to commence at 18:00. A drinks reception will be held at 19:10, immediately after the lecture.

Professor Mary Malone

Biography

Mary Malone is Vice Dean (Education) and Professor of Nursing at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care. She is responsible for ensuring that the Faculty’s education provision develops excellent, caring nurses, midwives and palliative care practitioners delivering evidence-based, research-driven care.

Mary’s expertise spans nurse and health visitor education, child and family health promotion, child and family public health and health.

Between 2018-2021, Mary was Director of the Oxford School of Nursing and Midwifery at Oxford Brookes University, which is a partnership between Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Oxford Brookes University. There she has established ‘Director Rounds’ to meet with students, worked closely with NHS Trusts to champion collaborations between partners, refreshed the curriculum based on student feedback, widening access, and improving equality, diversity and inclusion.

Before Oxford Brookes, Mary had been at King’s and was Head of the Department of Adult Nursing in the Faculty.

Nursing a Plague: Nurses’ Perspectives on their Work during the United Kingdom HIV/AIDS Crisis, 1981–96, by Professor Tommy Dickinson

Abstract

The United Kingdom (UK)’s acute HIV/AIDS crisis emerged in 1981. It continued until 1996 when the evidence base for antiretroviral medication was confirmed, and concepts of HIV/AIDS shifted from untreatable terminal illness to manageable long-term illness. This lecture draws on new oral histories of nurses who cared for people living with HIV/AIDS (PWHA), the loved ones of people who died of AIDS-related illnesses, and people who were diagnosed as HIV-positive between 1981 and 1996. The lecture reviews the atmosphere surrounding HIV/AIDS in the UK in the 1980s and explores the early difficulties and guidelines surrounding HIV/AIDS nursing in the UK. In describing the personal draw that HIV/AIDS care had for some nurses, particularly those who identified as ‘queer’, the lecture shows how HIV/AIDS wards often became safe queer spaces, full of humour and campness. Nurses undertaking this work were marred by their regular interactions with stigmatised individuals. Despite this – and perhaps sometimes because of it – many nurses worked to create a home-like environment on hospital wards for PWHA and to craft new ways of caring that involved a willingness to bend the rules. The lecture explores how nurses faced new decisions about what was permissible in these times of crisis and how these experiences profoundly impacted their lives, professionally and personally.

Biography

Tommy Dickinson is a Professor of Nursing Education and Head of the Department of Mental Health Nursing at King's College London. He qualified as a registered nurse in 2001, and following a clinical career predominantly working in gerontological and social care nursing in the UK and Australia, he moved into an academic role in 2006. He held lectureships at several universities before commencing at King’s as a Senior Lecturer in 2016.

In 2017, he was awarded the prestigious endowed Talbott Visiting Professor of Nursing at the University of Virginia in the USA, where he was in residence for the spring term of 2017-2018. In 2020, Professor Dickinson was promoted to Reader and Professor of Nursing Education in 2022. In 2021, Professor Dickinson became the only UK-based nurse selected for a Fellowship in the USA’s National League for Nursing’s Academy of Nursing Education. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the European Academy of Nursing Science. Professor Dickinson is an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Nursing Education and the Journal of American Nurses Association - New York. He also serves on the inaugural Advisory Board of the Society of Internationally Educated Nurses in North America (SIENNA).