Royal recognition for nurse consultant Jo

Jo Painter, who works for Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust helping to improve the physical health of people in Rotherham with severe mental health illnesses, has been made a Queen’s Nurse, a top honour awarded by The Queen’s Nursing Institute.

The 50-year-old also teaches the next generation of NHS professionals as a university lecturer.

She attended the ceremony in London to collect the top honour awarded by The Queen’s Nursing Institute, along with other community nurses from across the country who had also demonstrated a high level of commitment to patient care.

Jo divides her working week equally between her NHS role at Rotherham’s Ferham Clinic and teaching future nurses as a senior lecturer in mental health nursing at Sheffield Hallam University.

She said: “Mental health nursing is under-represented nationally in most forums and community mental health nursing in particular has a low profile.

“This gives me an opportunity to promote this area of practice as university students come on placement in my area.”

Jo trained in Rotherham, qualifying as a nurse in 1997 and worked for a while at what is now Swallownest Court’s Goldcrest Ward.

This is where she met her husband Jon, a former nurse who also lectures in mental health nursing at Hallam.

Her family links with healthcare pre-date the start of the NHS, as her grandmother, Lynn Dunn, was a Red Cross nurse during the Second World War.

Lynn received no formal training, learning on the job, and was photographed working at the country’s first nursing home when it opened in Manchester.