Meet our director of nursing, Kaye Williams

When thinking about roles within primary care, a GP role is one of the first to spring to mind. However, our nurses play a crucial role in primary care delivery, especially throughout Northumbria Primary Care (NPC). 

We have recently appointed Kaye Williams as the head of nursing and standards. Kaye brings a wealth of experience to NPC from working as a nurse in primary and secondary care. We caught up with Kaye to learn more about her experience and thoughts on taking on this new role within NPC.

I was born in York and then moved to the Northumberland / Newcastle area in my early years. Although I was born in York, I’m definitely a northern girl at heart. This might come as a surprise to some people but after school, I completed a hotel and catering diploma and worked as a retail trainee manager.

Nursing was something I sort of fell into. My mother was a mental health nurse, and this inspired me to change career in 1993. I started my nursing journey on Project 2000 which was a higher education scheme for nursing qualifications by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

I then moved to Plymouth which is where I completed my nursing training. Training in Plymouth gave me the experience of delivering care in the south which I thought was different to how it is delivered in the north. With Plymouth being a small city, I found that care tended to be delivered differently from how it is in the north. It was great for my career to experience delivering care in different environments however, I’m more of a fast-paced person and I found that my working style was better suited to the North.

I returned to the North and moved into many different roles including working as a critical care nurse at the Freeman Hospital and working with a 24-hour urgent care team in Gateshead. I moved into a general practice setting when I became a nurse practitioner at Ponteland Medical Group and then progressed into the role of a matron, this was when my journey with Northumbria Primary Care began.

In May 2024, I was successful in gaining the role of head of nursing for NPC. This is an incredibly exciting time to introduce a new role into NPC, our practice list is expanding, and our workforce is growing.

I hope this appointment sets an example for other primary care models on the importance of nursing within general practice. After GPs, nurses are the largest staff group within primary care, and I believe that having a post in place to represent this staff group will shine a light on the crucial role nurses play in improving patients’ outcomes.  

Much of my time in this role is spent working on the corporate side and this includes working with the managing director and the board to set a strategic plan for nursing within primary care. Over the past couple of months, I have started getting out and about to different practices to get to know the different teams within NPC and how they work. I’ve also been looking at what we can do to increase retention and maximise career progression for nurses within NPC.

Something that excites me about this role is getting the chance to showcase the importance of nurses within primary care. I want to make sure my nursing colleagues feel valued within the organisation and as part of this, we will be reviewing our research opportunities for our nurses and encouraging development wherever possible.

Another thing that I am looking forward to expanding is the recruitment of student nurses. As a student nurse, there is a heavy focus on training within secondary care and I want to work with our local universities and training bodies to raise awareness of the opportunities for nurses within primary care. After all, this is the next generation of nurses who are our future healthcare providers, therefore we must do everything we can to support them in the profession and showcase all the development opportunities primary care nursing has to offer.

Although this new role is mainly focused on the more strategic direction of nursing, I haven’t left my clinical side behind, and I still work as an advanced clinical practitioner at Widdrington and Felton practices in Northumberland. I’ve found that still being able to carry out clinical duties has been beneficial to this new role as I can maintain that face-to-face interaction with our patients. I get to find out what works for them, and what doesn’t work and from this create a strategy that is centred around what is best for our patients.

I live in Northumberland now, so I am extremely lucky to have such lovely countryside just on the doorstep. I love being able to get out in my garden and take my dog George out on long walks.

I feel very fortunate to be starting this role at such an exciting time for NPC. The development of their clinical strategy shows that they are focused on improving the quality of care they provide for our communities and how passionate they are about providing great patient experience.

I hope that my role helps maximise the exposure of nurses within primary care and highlights all the work that they do to provide high-quality care to our patients.