Grace Cook RMN, MSc, BSc (Hons)
Person-centred Practice Facilitator
Grace’s career started with an undergraduate degree in Criminology and Psychology at Sheffield Hallam University. This provided her the opportunity to work as a Special Constable, giving her the experience of working with people with mental health difficulties, which led to her desire to work within this arena.
She commenced a post graduate diploma in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Nottingham and loved her role as a student nurse however had some difficult times during her studies. The combination of clinical supervision, Compassion Focused theory, and caring tutors supported Grace to complete her studies. Having qualified as a nurse in 2013, she worked on a specialist therapeutic unit and a variety of acute settings. She then worked as a senior community mental health nurse within the NHS.
In 2013, Grace was offered an opportunity to work as a research associate with the University of Nottingham to develop a new clinical supervision model based on Compassion Focused Therapy. This is something that she had continued to feel passionate about after qualifying and had also noticed the impact of a highly stressful role on staff’s wellbeing and therefore jumped at the opportunity. This led to her being involved in developing and evaluating Resilience Based Clinical Supervision. Grace presented findings for these evaluations at the NET conference in 2016 and the RCN Education Conference in 2019.
Grace worked with Health Education England as a RePAIR Fellow 2019/2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic began Grace ensured that she continued to advocate for staff support, including working with FoNS to develop resources as part of her RePAIR Fellow Role.
Grace joined FoNS in 2021 as the RBCS programme manager and loves working on something she feels passionate about. Grace is a qualified Professional Nurse Advocate and as well as leading the RBCS programme here at FoNS, is an advocate for restorative clinical supervision for nurses.