Susanne Simmons

Susanne's academic career has focused on course leadership (or equivalent) for Child Health and Neonatal and Clinical Speciality courses across pre-registration and post-registration programmes within the School of Health Sciences. She is currently the Graduate Certificate/Post Graduate Certificate course leader and Neonatal Pathway leader and has extensive experience of being a module leader and a module team member across the Nursing and Continuous Professional Education programmes in the School of Health Sciences. Susanne's values of learning and teaching reflect a collegiate and respectful engagement with students to find out how I can help them learn, to foster understanding and a passion for subject knowledge, relate theory to clinical practice and engender a passion for lifelong learning. She teaches a variety of neonatal and child health clinical topics at levels 4,5,6 and 7 to both pre-registration and post-registration students. Susanne's teaching approach reflects the integral values of demonstrating credibility and authenticity. She uses creative learning and teaching strategies to enhance student experience such as work based learning, flipped learning, use of Evoke© cards for action learning sets and fostering student’s critical reflection on clinical experience. Student module evaluations have consistently acknowledged how these approaches provide a learning space that promotes a collegiate environment and engages students in active learning and understanding. Susanne facilitates simulation for pre- and post-registration students which allows them to learn technical hands-on clinical skills and evaluate human factors such as teamwork, communication, situational awareness, time management and clinical leadership. Student feedback has consistently been extremely positive with students requesting more simulation in the curriculum. Susanne has been nominated on a number of occasions for the University of Brighton Excellence in Facilitating and Empowering Learning award. She received this award in 2011 and 2019 and the University of Brighton Student Union Inspirational Teaching Award in 2014

Prior to entering higher education full-time Susanne held a Lecturer/Practitioner role for 3 years: 0.5 WTE Neonatal Clinical Practice Educator role and a 0.5 WTE Senior Lecturer role within the University of Brighton. During this time she was awarded the Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education leading to registration as a nurse educator with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). In 2001 Susanne became a full-time Senior Lecturer in Child Health and since then has held a number of course leader (or equivalent) roles. In her course leadership roles, she have experienced four periodic reviews and two validation events (including a course subject to Professional Statutory Regulatory Body requirements) which has provided her with opportunities to develop expertise in curriculum design and quality assurance. In 2012 Susanne provided expert advice as a project member of the national task and finish group which developed the knowledge required for a national core neonatal curriculum for neonatal nurse education (BAPM/RCN 2012). Also in 2012 Susanne and a colleague were successful in applying for a £30,000 Department for International Development grant (one of 8 successful applications out of 63) to develop the first Paediatric Nursing course in Zambia. After three years of culturally sensitive collaboration with government ministers, senior medical and nursing colleagues, the Zambian General Nursing Council and colleagues in the Lusaka School of Nursing, the course was validated in 2014 and has successfully been delivered in country every year. This 3 year project (2012 – 2015) has continued to be sustainable, increasing the number of children’s nurses in Zambia from 3 to nearly 200 (https://www.thet.org/case-studies/implementation-first-paediatric-nursing-course-zambia/). In 2015 Susanne contributed, with the project team, to a symposium entitled Sharing experience of nurse educational partnerships in Africa (UK with Zambia) at the AdvanceHE organised annual international NET (networking for education in healthcare) conference. Susanne is currently the course leader for the Graduate Certificate and Post Graduate Certificate Clinical Practice courses. The five clinical specialist pathways (and related 48 modules) in the Clinical Practice courses provide clinically focused education related to specialist healthcare practice and enable junior healthcare professionals to progress their career within a specialist area of clinical practice.

The grounded theory (moratorial fathering: enduring sustained uncertainty in the transition to premature fatherhood) from Susanne's PhD offers a new way of conceptualising premature fatherhood. It focuses on the sociological response to event familiarity and further contributes to the literature on Uncertainty in Illness theory. There has historically been a paucity of literature on preterm father’s experiences and disseminating her research findings has been illuminating for students, who have reflected on how they appreciate that fathers’ needs are often overlooked.

Susanne's supervisory interests are qualitative health-related research focusing on neonatal or child health