Professor Kerry Gaskin
Kerry joined BCU in January 2024 as the first Professor of Congenital Cardiac Nursing in the UK.
Kerry studied at North Birmingham College of Nurse Education, becoming a Registered General Nurse in 1992. She is a graduate of Oxford Brookes University with a BA (Hons) in Paediatric Nursing (1996); an MSc in Advanced Practice (Nursing) from Birmingham City University (2005) and a PhD from Coventry University (2017).
As a registered nurse, Kerry held leadership and education roles in the National Health Service within children’s cardiac intensive care and cardiac high dependency care at several specialist children’s hospitals in the UK. She moved into academia as a Senior Lecturer in children’s nursing in 2005, developing the first entirely online international post-graduate programme in congenital cardiac nursing. Later she became Principal Lecturer in Advanced Clinical Practice and Associate Professor of Nursing.
Kerry is a mixed-methods researcher with a particular interest in congenital heart disease nursing. With parents and colleagues, Kerry developed a parental early warning tool called the Congenital Heart Assessment Tool (CHAT), empowering parents to escalate worries and concerns by identifying signs of deterioration in their infant and making prompt contact with the appropriate health care professionals. Kerry is also interested in transforming lives of children and young people with CHD and their families, reducing health inequalities, and improving patient safety through knowledge mobilisation.
Kerry is the chairperson for the Congenital Cardiac Nurses Association UK and a member of the British Congenital Cardiac Association and the Society of Pediatric Cardiovascular Nurses (USA). She is an Associate Editor for Evidence Based Nursing and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Paramedic Practice.