Double award win for lecturer and heart failure palliative care nurse

A Glasgow Caledonian University Senior Lecturer and Heart Failure Palliative Care Nurse Consultant has won two awards for her outstanding contribution to heart failure and cardiac palliative care across the UK.

Yvonne Millerick, who has been lecturing at GCU for over two decades and nursing for 38 years, received the British Society for Heart Failure’s Lynda Blue Memorial Award for Excellence in Heart Failure.

She won the award for her “exceptional contribution to heart failure care and practice across the UK by consistently demonstrating strategic Leadership, Innovation, Advocacy, Visionary and Transformational attributes”.

This prestigious award was created to remember the outstanding legacy of Heart Failure Nurse Pioneer Lynda Blue, who sadly died on the 24th November 2018. Lynda had close links to GCU and was instrumental in setting up a bespoke national heart failure specialist nurse postgraduate training module in 2002.

Yvonne was also awarded the title of Fellow of the British Society for Heart Failure in recognition of her “amazing contribution to heart failure and palliative care”. She is one of only 25 international heart failure ‘celebrities’ to be awarded the honour in the Society’s 25-year existence.

She said: “I feel profoundly honoured, humbled and totally blown away to be affiliated with both these prestigious awards.

“I will always treasure being mentored by our very own Glasgow-born heart failure nurse guru Lynda Blue and to be recognised, and to be awarded a Fellow of the British Society for Heart Failure is completely overwhelming.

“There have been so many patients, families and professionals along the way who have partnered me to reach this professional milestone, without them, I would never have got here. Thank you to each and every one of them.”

Yvonne, from Cumbernauld, is a Senior Lecturer in Heart Failure and Palliative Care in the Department of Nursing and Community Health and has been inspiring the next generation of heart failure nurses and allied health professionals across the UK for more than 20 years.

Alan Middleton, Deputy Head of the Department of Nursing and Community Health, said: “As a department, we are both pleased and proud that Yvonne has received the British Society for Heart Failure’s Lynda Blue Memorial Award for Excellence in Heart Failure and awarded the title of Fellow of the British Society for Heart Failure. This is a worthy recognition of Yvonne’s contribution to the care and treatment of people experiencing chronic heart failure.”

Yvonne began her nursing career at Forth Valley Hospital, before transferring to Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 2000 to be one of the UK's first dedicated heart failure nurses working alongside the late Lynda Blue.

She currently works with patients, their families and a wide range of professionals as a Heart Failure Palliative Care Nurse Consultant Senior Lecturer – providing support at a time when many are at their most vulnerable.