Clinical Leads play a vital role in our residents’ overall care and quality of life. It’s a senior position at each of our homes that ensures a high standard of clinical management, enabling residents to maintain independence and choice.

It involves leading and advising carers and nursing staff, and working closely with the Home Manager and central Operations Team. Here, two of our Clinical Leads, Lisa Wynne at Woodpeckers and Matt Shaw at Castle View, explain the help they have received to step up and how the role has given them the ideal opportunity to progress their careers.

With a background in neonatal and paediatric nursing both in her native South Africa and here in the UK, Lisa Wynne was working in the intensive care unit of an NHS hospital when she took a call about a possible job at Colten Care.

“I said I couldn’t work with older people,” she recalls. “Care home nursing simply wasn’t a specialty in my mind, so I wasn’t interested.”

After further discussion, however, Lisa was eventually persuaded to try a job with us. She joined us as an RGN at Belmore Lodge in Lymington, working there for five years until the Clinical Lead opportunity came up a few miles away at Woodpeckers in Brockenhurst.

“When I started at Belmore Lodge, I came to realise quickly that care of the elderly is indeed a specialty in itself. It’s so different to what I had experienced before. Care homes are complex and nurses have to be skilled to manage residents. I really enjoyed nursing at Belmore and felt ready to step up to Clinical Lead at Woodpeckers when the time came.

“I love my job as Clinical Lead. It’s a great role within the company and a very interesting one, still focused on nursing but as part of management. I would absolutely encourage aspiring nurses to progress to Clinical Lead.”

Lisa’s sentiments are echoed by her colleague at Castle View in Poundbury, Dorset. Like her, Clinical Lead Matt Shaw is an experienced nursing professional who values quality time with residents. Born and bred in Dorchester, Matt decided to become a nurse at age 12 after a family tragedy.

“My dad passed away on Christmas Day,” he explains. “He had fallen down the stairs and his head had gone through a gate at the bottom. I remember being in intensive care with him. He was there for three days. One nurse spoke to me and explained what was going on. That really struck me, her taking the time to make me feel valued. Exactly ten years later, on Christmas Day once again,

I did my very first NHS shift having trained and qualified as a 22-year-old nurse. Ever since then I feel I have been repaying that experience of feeling valued, for other families. In Colten Care you have the time to do that.”

Matt did his nurse training at the University of Essex and then worked in the acute surgical department at Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester.

He moved into district nursing attached to a GP surgery and covered a catchment that included Dorchester, Weymouth and Portland. “While retaining my passion for nursing, I transitioned to community care because it offered more one-on-one quality time. It’s a privilege to be in someone’s home and having their trust to care for them.”

Growing up locally, Matt was aware of Castle View and had previously visited on a ‘Dignity in Action’ day as a 17-year-old to help give some ‘pampering’ to residents. “I remember it being posh and thinking it was a nice home. As time went on, I heard a lot of good things about Colten Care. When the post of Senior Nurse came up, I saw that it had matching clinical skills to what I was doing already.”