Meet our Lead Nurse for our West Northumberland Neighbourhood, Naomi Toothill

For the second instalment of Our NPC Team for 2025, we dive into the world of primary care nursing. Our nurses play a key role in primary care, often being the first point of contact for patients and vital in promoting health and wellness.

We’re delighted to speak to Naomi Toothill, our lead nurse for the West Northumberland neighbourhood. Naomi gives us an insight into her roles as a lead nurse, the challenges of her role and what makes it so rewarding.

Unlike many other nurses, my path into nursing wasn’t one I had planned from childhood. At 18, while working in a charity shop, a regular customer noticed my caring nature and suggested I’d make an excellent nurse. Her encouragement stayed with me, and I decided to take her advice and pursue a career in nursing.

In 1998, I began my training through the traditional nursing school route. At the time, entry required five O-levels. Alongside my studies, I gained hands-on experience working at Preston Hospital in North Shields. After completing my training, I started my nursing career at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, where I worked on a medical ward and in intensive care.

I truly loved my time in secondary care. Being part of a large, supportive team made a significant difference. Healthcare can be both overwhelming and deeply emotional at times and having that strong support system around me was invaluable in navigating the challenges.

I stayed in secondary care nursing for a while but then in 2015 I decided to make the move to primary care initially because I wanted more family friendly working hours. I started at Ponteland Medical Group as a practice nurse and instantly loved it.

It did take a bit of an adjustment moving from secondary to primary care as you go from a big team to working autonomously doing clinics on your own. You do have a lot of support around you but working alone gives you a lot of room to develop your skills and build confidence.

What I love about primary care nursing is how much of a rewarding career it is. You get to know your patients personally and understand their family histories which helps you to provide more personalised care.

I also love the variety of work you get with primary care nursing; we help treat a wide range of conditions and patients from different background and age groups. One day I could be helping treat a minor injury like a sprain the next day I could be monitoring a diabetic’s blood sugar and providing education on lifestyle changes to help manage their condition. By providing personalised, patient-centred care, primary care nurses help prevent complications, promote wellness and manage a variety of health conditions effectively. What makes the role worth it is seeing how the care you provide positively makes a difference to your patient’s life.

A key moment in my career that stands out is when I qualified as a nurse practitioner seven years ago which was an opportunity that rose through Northumbria Primary Care. I had to complete a very intense, 18-month long course which had a prescribing module in that I found incredibly challenging, but I completed it and it was one of the best things I ever did. Being a nurse practitioner means that I’m permitted to diagnose and treat illnesses and prescribe treatments to patients.

In the summer of 2023, I was appointed as the lead practice nurse for West Northumberland and our practices in this neighbourhood are, NPC Ponteland and NPC Haydon Bridge and Allendale. Not only was this a chance for me to develop in my role, it was also an opportunity for me to experience delivering care to a new community. I’d worked at NPC Ponteland since 2015 therefore I had a long stint in delivering care in one community. NPC Haydon Bridge and Allendale is located in a rural part of Northumberland, you tend to see older patients who require different methods of treatment to suit their healthcare needs.

As my colleague Lisa Hutchinson said, who is the lead nurse for the North Tyneside neighbourhood explained in her blog, our roles as lead nurses vary from day to day including carrying out clinical and non-clinical duties. An exciting project that I am working on right now is the ‘Year of Care’ and this focuses on improving and standardising care of long-term conditions across the whole of NPC. The outcome of this project will ensure that our patients are getting the right care, empowering them to manage their conditions and improving their long-term outcomes.

What I love about NPC is how much they care for their people and how you’re encouraged to develop in your role. Throughout my nine years here I’ve been supported by the organisation in any way I can to develop my skills and widen my experience in nursing, this has helped me improve as a nurse and be equipped to provide the best possible care to our patients.

As I step into another year working at NPC I’m looking forward to helping improve nursing standards across the organisation and supporting all of our nurses to deliver this. Here’s to 2025 at NPC!