Agnes trained as a Registered Nurse at Ayrshire and Arran College of Nursing & Midwifery, undertaking placements in a variety of hospitals throughout Ayrshire, and qualifying in 1982. Since then, she has worked almost exclusively in perioperative practice in hospitals in Lanarkshire. Agnes has long been interested in education in relation to perioperative practice and she qualified as a Nurse Lecturer/Practice Educator in 1999.
She joined Glasgow Caledonian University as a lecturer in 2009. Agnes has been a module leader for several undergraduate modules, including Care of the Patient in the Immediate Postoperative Period, Principles of Post Anaesthetic Care, Managing Post Anaesthetic and Critical Care. She continues to work in clinical practice for one day each week as a surgical, an anaesthetic, and a recovery room practitioner, and this allows her to remain up to date with contemporary perioperative care.