Laura Serrant: reflect to stride forwards

Laura Serrant CBE has made an indelible mark on the NHS and higher education since graduating in nursing in the 1980s. Now set to publish a book on leadership, she shares her journey and lessons learned.

Like many at the start of a new year, Professor Laura Serrant took time to reflect on her career achievements and also made fresh plans. January marked the first anniversary of her appointment as chair of Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, for example. This was a circular career path of sorts, since Laura’s entry into nursing began as a teenager in Sheffield in the early 1980s. At the time, she had enrolled on a four-year BA programme at the City Polytechnic. Back then, it was one of only a handful of higher education institutes (HEIs) offering pioneering nursing degree courses to ambitious, academically minded students seeking an alternative to traditional nursing school training.

After graduating in 1986, Laura completed the then mandatory two-year period in a hospital setting – in her case becoming a staff nurse in gynaecology – before taking her first steps into a community post in the ‘Steel City’.

Over the next four decades, Laura has contributed to and been responsible for overseeing innovations in policy, education and research with direct impact on frontline NHS care. She also became a Professor of Community and Public Health Nursing in 2020.

‘I had always wanted to work in the community,’ Laura recalls. ‘I was employed as an adult nurse working in AIDs care, rather than being registered as a district nurse or a health visitor, for example. While I have spent most of my nursing career in working in the community, I am not on the community nursing register.’

PANDEMIC PARALLELS

Looking back to those days, Laura sees clear parallels between the ‘moral panic’ that was whipped up during the AIDs pandemic in the late 1980s and the more recent responses she witnessed to the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘I remember that people didn’t want to share cutlery or mix with people they thought might have AIDs, for example. Many people isolated themselves at home. Certain people were labelled as being “responsible” and lots of family tensions emerged.’

The lessons that can be learned from that period are for society in general, Laura believes. ‘In pandemics, it’s very easy to scapegoat and blame particular communities,’ she says. ‘We need to recognise what the risks to healthcare professionals are and the importance of giving accurate messages to them and the public at large.’

Much of Laura’s focus these days is on fostering effective and sensitive leadership styles, and pandemics can throw the spotlight on flawed, top-down approaches, she says. ‘The people lowest down the “food chain” tend to be most at risk when a new pandemic emerges, and we need to look at how we protect those at the bedside or in the clinics, for example.’

EMBRACING OPPORTUNITY

Laura stresses that she has never sat down and planned her career; rather she has always been willing to take on extra challenges that helped her develop professionally and personally. It was the chance to fill in for a sick colleague running evening healthcare classes at a local college early on in her nursing career that would eventually help to pave the way for a succession of university posts, including Lincoln, Wolverhampton, and Sheffield Hallam. It was also around the time when her first son, Robert, was born.

As her academic career evolved, Laura accrued teaching qualifications, a masters and a PhD. Moving up the ladder to become a full professor, she further honed her research and writing skills, gained confidence as a platform speaker and forged a reputation nationally. In 2018, Laura was appointed as the head of the School of Nursing at Manchester Metropolitan University – the first Black head of nursing in any UK university. Reflecting on some of her career highs, she reveals: ‘Being a Professor of Community and Public Health Nursing is a reflection of my academic and research standing.’

INCLUSION MATTERS

‘There were not many nurses with doctorates when I got mine (in nursing science) in 2004 – mainly because nursing only become an all-graduate profession in 2013,’ Laura explains. ‘Certainly, there were fewer black nurses with doctorates 20 years ago. In fact, the number of black professors generally is still disproportionately low in the UK, and the figure is particularly low in nursing itself.’

For Laura, the issue of diversity (or lack of) is a ‘moving feast’. ‘It’s very unlikely that as human beings we are going to get to the point of saying this issue “is done” – though it has moved mountains since I started my nurse training in 1982,’ she says. Laura prefers to focus on promoting ‘inclusive practice’ rather than ‘diversity’, as she believes the latter term is now a little outmoded. ‘It’s not about saying “everything is okay now”, but we know what we need to do now.

‘I think the challenge we have in society generally – and in education and healthcare in particular – is that we don’t always know how to do it’. Her current consultancy work focuses on inclusive practice: asking yourself how to ensure your practice / what you do every day in your job is inclusive.

Laura has worked nationally and internationally on health policy development over the years with specialist input on health inequalities and service user engagement. ‘My biggest achievement is probably my contribution to health policy, both here and overseas,’ she says.

CHANGING COURSE

Last year was a milestone for Laura. She stood down as regional head of nursing and midwifery for Health Education England’s (HEE) North East and Yorkshire region. This was prompted she says more by her personal ambitions than by the fact that HEE was merging with NHS England.

‘I could quite easily have remained in a full time senior executive role in the NHS until I finished working completely. But I felt I wanted to impact the system differently and do some other things.’ Outside of the NHS, Laura works as a leadership development and inclusive practice specialist. She encourages people to ‘nurture their inner entrepreneur’, ignoring the voices that tell us we are only capable of working in one set area.

Laura has never simply waited for something to come along. Growing up as the eldest girl in a large family in Nottingham, she learned to act autonomously and take responsibility early on. Her parents’ bold decision to head from a Caribbean island to the UK in the 1960s – as part of what’s become known as the Windrush generation – has been an endless source of inspiration.

Having written more than 100 research based books, articles and chapters for healthcare publications, in 2024 Laura self-published her first non-academic book, Stories from my Mother’s House, in 2024. ‘This book, which includes a number of poems, is far more important that anything else I’ve written and is about growing up in the inner-city with a fiercely loyal family and what each room in my mother’s home meant to me growing up,’ Laura explains.

WALK THIS WAY

Towards the end of 2024, Laura and four friends completed a 174-mile hike covering parts of Portugal and northern Spain, raising funds for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital charity. ‘It was a physical and mental challenge getting up each day for two weeks to do the walk. I wanted to take time to say thanks for the opportunities I’ve had and to remember family members and others I’ve lost through my journey in life.’

Laura now has a new book in the pipeline, entitled The Lioness Effect: leading with integrity and impact. ‘The book will be based on what I have learned in my business work and over time in my career in healthcare,’ she says.

The end of 2024 was topped off with a CBE for services to nursing. With all her experience as a nurse, educator and policy maker, what advice does she have for the CP professions on making a difference in the current climate of workforce shortages, large caseloads and pay disputes?

‘If I, as an individual nurse, can use the system flexibly to help a family have an equal chance, that’s great. But if I don’t also impact the system and underlying processes, then that means that family only has a chance because of me. If I move on, then they are back where they started. We need to make a difference that is sustainable, so that other people can benefit. We have to be minded to the full picture.’

Reflection remains essential, as Laura notes at this ‘last phase’ in her working life. ‘The legacy is as important as what you are doing now. You have got to remember what you have done and where you have been, as well as constantly planning where you are going next.’

A FEW INSIGHTS

Creative side Laura performed her poem You Called … and We Came, celebrating the contribution of Black nurses to the healthcare system in England, to acclaim at the 2017 England CNO’s annual BME conference. In 2022, the poem was chosen to adorn a prominent statue in London’s Waterloo Station to commemorate the Windrush generation’s impact.

Best piece of advice ‘The biggest lesson I have learned in my career and life generally is to stop, slow down and enjoy the moment,’ says Laura.

Family time Laura proudly talks of her three children – Robert, Jack and Helena – and their contrasting careers as a singer songwriter and music director, a professional footballer turned fledgling physiotherapy student and a fashion designer, respectively. Fridays are now sacrosanct in her diary, as that’s when she cares for granddaughter, 19-month-old Bonnie.

lauraserrant.com

^{Words | Ian A McMillan 
Image | Lensi Photography}