Dr Valerie Ness
Head of Department and Senior Lecturer
Department of Nursing and Community Health
Valerie is a senior lecturer at GCU and the programme lead for the pre-registration BSc/BSc(Hons) Nursing Studies Programme.
She previously worked as a registered nurse and Emergency Nurse Practitioner with the Emergency Department at Glasgow Royal Infirmary until joining GCU in 2002. Since then she has taught across undergraduate and postgraduate nursing programmes, led a variety of modules, and been level three and adult field pathway leader and the Community Engagement and Social Mission Co-ordinator for the Department. She also successfully led the 2019 pre-registration nursing programme curriculum review through revalidation (with the NMC) and reapproval with GCU.
Valerie is an active member of the Safeguarding Health through Infection Prevention (SHIP) research group, leading on public engagement and public involvement. She completed her PhD in 2018, a Scottish Infection Research Network/ CSO Training Fellowship, exploring nurse prescribers’ antimicrobial prescribing behaviour and the determinants of this behaviour.
She has been involved in a variety of research studies, most recently focusing on antimicrobial stewardship and the role of the nurse. She is working collaboratively with an international group of experts developing AMS competencies into the healthcare curriculum and also sits on the national workforce education development advisory group for the Scottish Antimicrobial Prescribing Group.
Valerie is currently supervising a doctoral student who is exploring theory-informed interventions to enhance antimicrobial stewardship in hospitals and has another student starting this year who will be exploring the IPC lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to nursing practice.
Her research interests include antimicrobial stewardship, behavioural theory, antimicrobial resistance, nurse prescribing and the role of the nurse.