Surveillance and monitoring for gastrointestinal disease (group discussion)

Lesley qualified as a general nurse in 1984, and as a Sick Children’s Nurse in 1986. After several years in clinical practice during which time she completed her BSc, she pursued initially an academic career – gaining her MPhil – and later turning her attention to becoming a fulltime researcher. In a serendipitous turn, she secured a post with Professor Christine Norton at King’s College London in 2008, and over the next 9 years completed 12 research projects all related in some way to patient experiences of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and other chronic illnesses. She was awarded her PhD in 2014 for a hermeneutic phenomenological study of the experience of stigma in IBD. Lesley is an acknowledged qualitative researcher with a particular expertise in hermeneutic phenomenology. She is committed to enabling advanced study and academic progression in IBD CNSs, and regularly collaborates with these specialist nurses to deliver research projects addressing issues of relevance in clinical practice. She received her Chair from the University of Greenwich in August 2021.

Jennie has worked in St Mark’s hospital for over 20 year and in colorectal nursing for longer than that. Jennie has experience in stoma care, research, enhanced recovery after colorectal surgery and is now working in post graduate nurse education. She has recently set up a BSc in gastrointestinal care and hopes to also run this at masters level. Jennie enjoys writing and has been involved in multiple journal publications, book chapters and book editing. Jennie has a degree and masters in gastrointestinal nursing and is currently undertaking a PhD, looking into anterior resection syndrome. Jennie's Twitter: @jenburch24

Laura is a nurse practitioner who works at the St Mark's centre for familial intestinal cancer, which embeds the polyposis registry, the family cancer and Lynch syndrome services. She is also the project manager of the Lynch syndrome quality improvement project.

In addition to being a nurse, Laura is a health psychologist and has been working with patients living with inherited conditions since 2012. She started working with patients with rare dementias at UCLH, and later with patients with inherited cardiac conditions at Imperial college, Guy's, St Thomas's & King's college Hospitals; and now with inherited colorectal cancer syndromes.

She have been interested on the psychological experience of living with inherited conditions since 2012, and today she is going to present some of her work to improve the service for patients living with Lynch syndrome.

Gerri is a Registered General Nurse with over 39 years of experience spanning both acute medical and surgical nursing in the acute setting, within the UK and abroad. For the last 6 years Gerri has worked in a part time academic role as a senior lecturer in Advanced Practice, teaching advanced practice skills to allied health professionals. Prior to this, she worked as the Lead Hepatology Nurse Specialist. Her expert knowledge of liver disease, has enabled her to publish widely in many nursing, prescribing and medical journals. Moreover, Gerri has a national profile and has been involved as expert advisor on x 2 Quality Standards, x 3 NICE Guidelines. In recognition of this, she was awarded the title of NICE Nurse Expert Advisor in 2015. In January 2020, Gerri and her co-author Yvonne Francis published a venesection guide for the UK, endorsed by the RCN. This guidance benefits thousands of patients who undergo venesection for haemochromatosis and polycythaemia in the UK and abroad. This recognition resulted in being awarded the prestigious Nurse of the Year 2021 accolade from the British Journal of Nursing, nominated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Gerri successfully completed her PhD in June 2021, titled “Advancing health professionals’ knowledge of liver disease.”

I have been involved in endoscopy since 1995, firstly as a staff nurse and then eventually holding several nurse specialist posts, including being a clinical endoscopist for the last 18 years. More recently I have been involved in training, education and development which is now the majority of my current role. I have always been passionate about training and education and with my enthusiasm for endoscopy this gives me a very engaging career pathway. I am a final year PhD student examining the lived experience of endoscopy trainees and I am an active member of BGSNA and I sit on various committees and working parties including those on sustainability.