Nicole Crimmings

Nicole is looking forward to being involved with the education of our future nursing workforce and sharing her nursing experience, to enhance student nurses learning experience. Nicole is especially looking forward to a two-way teaching ethos, as she supports students in their experiences of nursing in a post-pandemic world.  

After 9 years working in PICU, Nicole went back to University at Swansea and completed her Specialist Community Public Health Nursing qualification (SCPHN) in Health Visiting, having trained working in the Grangetown area of Cardiff, which was a recognised population of largely Black & Minority Ethnic (BAME) children and families. Nicole worked across several areas of Wales to include Abertillery, Blaina, Tredegar, Ebbw Vale and Merthyr Tydfil, in the Flying Start WG funded initiative, which entailed working very intensively with families to ensure their children had a ‘Flying Start’ in life with the aim of improving their health outcomes, whilst living in recognised lower super-output areas. Nicole also worked within the generic Health Visiting Service, which generally covered all other locality areas in Wales, that were not considered to be poverty-stricken. Nicole worked as a Health Visitor for some 11 years, until a post became vacant in Ty Hafan Children's Hospice in Sully near Cardiff, which enabled Nicole to utilise her SCPHN skills and experience to be a Family Support Lead. The role of a Health Visitor saw Nicole teach at community level, to a diverse range of service users, to educate and inform them in order they could make changes to their lifestyles and health. The role also required teaching of some college students and to also teach student nurses about the role overall and the part it had to play in overall public health. This current post at Aberystwyth University, is the first teaching role Nicole has formally had and she looks forward greatly to being a small part of teaching the future nursing workforce. 

Nicole’s Paediatric nursing career has seen her work in general Paediatric nursing environments based in Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest upon qualifying, which included medical, surgical, and orthopaedic specialities being catered for, prior to the transfer of Paediatric services to Carmarthen, many years later. Nicole then relocated to the Valleys area of South Wales and worked in another general Paediatric ward in Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil, which was split into two sides and included a day assessment unit. It was here that she was promoted to a Grade E staff nurse (equivalent now to a Band 6 role). After more than 2 years working here, Nicole was keen to specialise further, having a good 4 years’ experience under her nursing belt. Nicole was successful in gaining a post in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) which was then based in the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. The PICU unit was a 9 bedded unit and was the regional centre for Wales for PICU services. On this unit, level 1-3 paediatric patients were cared for, which ranged from non-invasive ventilation requirements, increasing to Level 3 patients, who were invasively ventilated and were on inotropic support for their affected circulatory symptoms and High Frequency Oscillation Ventilation and haemofiltration, where the clinical status was extremely critical and would often include multi-organ failure as a result of traumatic injuries or acute & long-term conditions or illnesses. Nicole completed her Specialist Practitioner in PICU degree at University of Central England in Birmingham, and spent months, as part of her degree, at Birmingham Children’s Hospital PICU, which was a far larger unit, specialising in cardiac, liver and burns care.