Meet the Team

Fiona Le Ber - Joint Forum Chair

Clinical Nurse Specialist Community Bladder & Bowel. Queens Nurse. RCN Bladder & Bowel Forum Steering Committee Chair

Fiona qualified as a RGN in 1992 after training in Southampton and Jersey schools of nursing, Fiona first worked on a busy medical/ medical assessment unit before moving to the endoscopy unit. After 17 years of hospital nursing she moved to the community to work as a community staff nurse for a local charity, where she managed a caseload of patients including care in 5 residential homes. Fiona has been the Community Continence and Stoma Care CNS for 8 years. The role has developed at an amazing rate.

Fiona, divides her time between patient visits, teaching Community Nurses and Carers, developing guidelines and working with commissioners to provide a sustainable service. Fiona also works closely with the hospital CNS’s in Urology, Stoma Care and Enteral feeding. She became a Queen’s Nurse in 2012 and then went on to be project lead for a Queen’s Nursing Institute and Burdett Trust for Nursing Fund for Innovation and Leadership funded project.

Fiona organised a successful “A Fresh Approach to Continence” Conference in 2019 which was attended by 90 delegates and aimed to enable Health Care Professionals to identify continence issues and support them to perform early patient centred and cost effective continence care.

Fiona has written several articles for the British Journal of Nursing on Stoma Care and has presented at 2021 RCN congress fringe event and a BJN Stoma Care webinar.

Fiona, joined the forum steering committee in 2020 where she was part of the working party that updated the RCNi e-Continence Learning Resource. She became Chair of the steering committee in 2022 and is keen to bring continence to the forefront of patient care.

Email Fiona

Anna Hancock - Joint Forum Chair

RGN dip (BSc hons) NMP Clinical Nurse Specialist for Continence Care – Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust

Anna qualified as an RGN in 1996, initially working in a Neurology setting where her passion for supporting patients experiencing bladder and bowel dysfunction began. This led to a subsequent 20-year career within continence services, working in various roles across the West Midlands.

Anna’s passion for learning has helped her previously establish a successful Continence Champion Network across Birmingham, deliver bespoke training for her own organisations and others including ‘Nursing in Practice’ conference and in partnership with the MS Society and Acute Neurology teams in Coventry for patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

Anna previously established a City-wide Paediatric Continence Service, with the support of Nurses from national charities, ERIC and Bladder and Bowel UK. She has wide experience of working with adults and children with a learning disability. Anna currently leads a newly re-established Integrated Continence Team in Coventry.
Anna aims to ensure patients with bladder and /or bowel dysfunction receive person centred, expert nurse-led care, at the right place and time, enabling patients to achieve their very best outcomes. She is looking forward to being able to support this through her work with the Bladder and Bowel Forum.

Vicky Coghlan

Advanced Nurse Practitioner Bladder & Bowel Service

I commenced my training in 1992 in South East Wales and developed an interest in surgical nursing. This led to my first position as a registrant on a surgical rotation of Vascular Surgery, Orthopaedics and Urology. It was my time spent in Urology which sparked my passion in Urology and Continence Issues. I specialised in Continence work with a research role initially. This led to a certification in Urodynamics, where I helped run a nurse led Urodynamic service in a busy District General Urology Departm

I am an Independent Prescriber and have established an Appliance Prescribing Service within the Healthboard. I have recently moved to the role of ANP for Bladder & Bowel Care. I am passionate about improving catheter care; which has been at the core of the services objectives for the past few years.

I am delighted to be part of the Bladder and Bowel RCN forum, and hope to bring my experience and a Welsh perspective of policy and care. Diolch!

Nikki Cotterill

Associate Professor of Nursing in Continence Care, UWE and North Bristol NHS Trust

I qualified in 1999 and worked in medicine and surgery before pursuing my interests in research at the Bristol Urological Institute in 2003. I am now an Associate Professor of Nursing in Continence Care at UWE and North Bristol NHS Trust having completed my PhD in 2009, developing a self-report symptom and quality of life questionnaire for individuals with faecal incontinence – the ICIQ-B. A driving ambition since my early PhD research has been to bridge the gap between people with bladder and bowel symptoms and the treatments that can help. I have spent approaching 20 years focusing on developing research to improve outcomes for all with bladder and bowel symptoms and am passionate about improving the experience for individuals with a focus on self-help and service development.

I am also the Director of the newly developed Bladder and Bowel CONfidence Health Integration Team (@babconHIT) taking a city- and system-wide approach to improvements in continence care provision and the wider societal experience of living with bladder and bowel symptoms. We are working collectively to raise the profile of bladder and bowel care through education, research and integrating care across systems, ensuring collaboration with patients and the public in all we do.

Follow me on Twitter for all things related to continence care research: @NikkiC07

Karen Irwin

Service Manager / Specialist Nurse

Karen qualified in Canterbury, as a Registered General Nurse, initially working in neurosciences, later moving into community nursing, qualifying as a District Nurse. It is at this point, she gained a passion for continence care, which led her to move to continence services in 1995, developing and setting up services, to include residential care, which at that time, was a relatively new initiative.  The project was nationally recognised, being highly commended in the nursing times awards. 

In 2000, Karen led a project, to develop the already well-established continence services, across 2 health authorities, as was, for patients with functional bowel issues, developing and implementing care pathways. This project was nationally recognised, winning the Continence Foundation Award.  On completing the project, Karen was appointment Lead Specialist Bowel Nurse.  She spent a seconded period, to the regional NW Medicines Management  Network for 18 months.  

Karen currently holds a dual role, both that of Service  Manager at the national charity Bladder & Bowel UK (BBUK) and continues to work as an NHS Specialist Nurse, in a regional pelvic floor /  functional bowel service. 

Karen is  delighted to be representing member of the Bladder and Bowel Forum.  She is looking forward to contributing to the  continued work and projects and also hopes to bring an added third sector perspective to the forum.

Jenny McCarthy

Clinical Nurse Specialist for the Emerald Nursing Team at Bbraun

Jenny has worked for most of her career within Bladder and Bowel care, including Primary, Secondary and Private Health care. Having started her career in Urology in 1992, she has worked as a Continence Nurse for 17 years and as a Urogynae Specialist Nurse for seven years. She currently works as a Clinical Nurse Specialist for the Emerald Nursing Team at BBraun Medical. 

Jenny has been fortunate to be involved in many changes within the specialty including service redesign and development of Level 1and 2 continence clinics and an integrated continence service, which was subsequently adopted by the Department of Health as a model of service delivery. She also contributed to the development of treatment pathways, adopted by Map of Medicine. She has a strong ethos of quality improvement, having developed a catheter pathway which was shortlisted for a Nursing Times Awards and development of the specification for a community TWOC service, which was also short listed.

Jenny is an Independent Prescriber and has experience in managing pelvic floor dysfunction, urinary incontinence, urodynamics and voiding dysfunction. Her area of special interest is female incontinence. 

Janice Reid

BSc(Hons) Advanced Nursing Practice, RN, DN, ANP, NMP, PG Dip, PG CHERP, FHEA

Teaching Fellow, School of Nursing, University of Ulster

Janice has worked in Community continence services since 2003 as a Continence Nurse Specialist progressing to Clinical lead and Service manager. She is a past Chair of Association for Continence Advice. Janice was a finalist in the RCN (NI) Nurse of the Year awards 2005 for her work on developing the first community based prostate assessment clinic in Northern Ireland. She won an HSC Quality award for this work in 2007.

Janice has an interest in male lower urinary tract symptoms as well as management of neurogenic bladder and bowel dysfunction. During her time as Clinical lead for Continence Services, she led a multidisciplinary working group in the development and implementation of care pathways for women with bladder and pelvic floor dysfunction.

Throughout her career Janice has been involved in providing education to learners and on leaving the NHS secured a position as a Teaching fellow in the School of Nursing, Ulster University. Along with delivery of pre-and post-registration teaching, Janice now co-ordinates the ongoing development and delivery of post graduate modules on bladder and bowel dysfunction. 

Janice is passionate about ensuring person centred care for individuals with bladder and bowel dysfunction and promotes the drive for excellence and evidence based practice. She is delighted to be part of the Bladder and Bowel Forum and very much looking forward to contributing to the work going forwards.