Page 88 - Powerlist 2020

Profiles

NEW Dame Donna Kinnair
2020
CEO & General Secretary,
Royal College of Nursing

Donna Kinnair was in the spring of 2019 appointed Chief
Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of
Nursing – the world’s largest nursing union and professional
body. She had held the post in an acting capacity since
August 2018, and is credited with steering the college
through a period of transition and helping to rebuild the
confidence of its membership.
The RCN is campaigning to deliver increased staffing
levels and funding to train the next generation of nurses.
Her predecessor had left the role in 2018 in the wake of anger
from members over how it communicated the delivery of the
nurse pay deal that was agreed last year between unions,
employers and the government.
Dame Donna joined the Royal College in 2015 as Head
of Nursing. She had previously been clinical director
of emergency medicine at Barking, Havering and
Redbridge University Hospitals Trust, executive director of
Nursing, Southeast London Cluster Board and director of
commissioning, London Borough of Southwark & Southwark
PCT. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008,
& Engineering
having been instrumental in improving child protection
following the murder of Victoria Climbié.
At the time working as director of nursing at Southwark
Primary Care Trust, Dame Donna was an adviser to Lord
Laming throughout his inquiry into the eight-year-old’s
tragic death at the hands of her great-aunt. Social workers
and medics missed a string of chances to intervene.
Dame Donna, a mother of three from Hackney, made
it her mission to fight for better communication between
health and social services, saying: “My daughter was the
same age as Victoria had been when I was working on the
Laming inquiry. I struggled with the fact that I was part of a
profession which could have done better.”

Science, Medicine
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