Community nurse appointed as honorary visiting professor in ‘rare’ recognition for sector

Community nurse Dr Ruth Oshikanlu has been appointed as an honorary visiting professor at City St George’s, University of London, in what she said was a rare recognition of community nursing.

Dr Oshikanlu, a fellow of the Institute of Health Visiting and the Royal College of Nursing, as well as a Queen’s Nurse and social entrepreneur, said she was ‘ecstatic’ to have been appointed, particularly because community nursing was often overlooked.

‘It’s rare that community nursing gets noticed so it’s not a celebration of me but of community nursing,’ she said.

Dr Oshikanlu, who was awarded an MBE in 2019, said she hoped to support the next generation of nursing and midwife students through research that ‘reflects and serves the community’.

She said she also wanted to support Black nurses and midwives, and those from other minority ethnic backgrounds, into research and leadership roles. Structural change in nursing requires ‘not just different policies, but different people shaping those policies,’ she added.

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Reflecting on her appointment, Dr Oshikanlu told Nursing in Practice: ‘I was so excited – ecstatic. It’s such a privilege to help shape the next generation.

‘I don’t do what I do to be recognised but it does give me a sense of responsibility.’

Dr Oshikanlu said she hoped to ‘bridge the gap between politics, policies and academia’ and that her focus as an honorary professor would be on ‘reducing inequities’.

‘We forget the marginalised because it’s always about the people who shout the loudest,’ she said.

Dr Oshikanlu said she had spent over 30 years ‘working in the spaces that too often fall between the cracks of the healthcare system’.

This included being one of the UK’s first Family Nurses, a role introduced in 2007 as part of the government’s Family Nurse Partnership (FNP), an intensive home-visiting programme for first-time young parents.

‘Those early years in the FNP taught me that if you want to change outcomes, you have to be genuinely present in people’s lives,’ she said.

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‘It is slow, relational, deeply human work. And it is exactly the kind of work the NHS should be doing more of, not less.’

In addition to frontline practice, she has worked as an author, social entrepreneur, and researcher.

Her 2012 book, Tune In To Your Baby: Because Babies Don’t Come With an Instruction Manual, focused on supporting parents to read and respond sensitively to their infant’s cues.

As a Churchill Fellow, Dr Oshikanlu undertook an international study examining trauma-responsive approaches to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and youth violence.

The findings were distilled into a multidisciplinary toolkit for policymakers, practitioners and researchers, making the evidence on ACEs and trauma-informed approaches more accessible to those working in health, education and the voluntary sector.

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Dr Oshikanlu is a fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery RCSI in Ireland.

She has also founded several social organisations, including Goal Mind and Abule Community Interest Company (CIC).