Karen Bampfield, a district nurse working for North West Wales NHS Trust at Ysbyty Tywyn, has won the prestigious Maureen Acland Award for Research and Development, offered by community nursing charity, The Queen’s Nursing Institute.

Karen’s project will look at the role of community nursing to help improve the care that stroke patients receive and make recommendations about how training and development can be improved. Results will be disseminated to health service commissioners to help them decide how to improve development opportunities and health services in the future.

Karen will use her experience gained during her MSc at Bangor University and will be working with researchers from the School of Healthcare Sciences during the course of this new project.

The Award, worth £7500, will fund the research project from May 2009 for twelve months. The Award is part of the Queen’s Nursing Institute’s Fund for Innovation, which in addition to providing funding also brings project leaders, who are all community nurses, together for three professional development sessions during the course of the year.

Karen Bampfield said: ‘I am delighted to have won the Maureen Acland Award for Research and Development. It is a tremendous honour for me to be able to undertake this piece of research that will explore the role of community nursing in stroke care supported by the Queens Nursing Institute, North West Wales NHS Trust and researchers from the School of Health Care Sciences at Bangor University’.

Rosemary Cook, Director of the Queen’s Nursing Institute said, “We are delighted to be funding this very important piece of research. People who have had a stroke deserve the best in community-based rehabilitation, as well as excellent hospital care in the initial stages. This work will help to establish what role District Nurses have in that care.”