About Me
Hello! My name is Ivie King, I am a Regional Clinical Lead in the South and I have been working in care for the last 10 years. I pursued working in the care industry to be a better advocate for people who cannot do this for themselves.
My role is overseeing clinical customers’ care, organising training days, facilitating changeovers, attending MDT’s, care reviews and supporting the branches with clinical input within the region I cover.
I started my care journey by being a young carer for a family member as a teenager. There was a district nurse who visited often, and I was always curious on what they were doing and why. They had so much knowledge and I was in awe. I became a carer at 18 years old and loved the variety of the job role and giving support to people in the community. There were limitations to the role, and I did not always feel heard when escalating concerns. One day I was speaking to a district nurse about this who said, ‘If you want to make a difference, you should be a nurse’.
I then went on to do my college course in health and social care and gained the relevant qualifications to go to university. Alongside my college course I worked as a health care assistant on the local bank, worked mainly in elderly care but also surgical and the short stay unit.
I left to move to Derby University to complete my nursing degree and worked in a mental health hospital part-time alongside my studies for 3 years which I loved, we would undertake admissions from forensic secure units, police detainees, voluntary admissions, people sectioned under the mental health act and support people who had mental health conditions and regular well-being checks. I fell into the job role of hairdresser, make up, and nail artist for some of the patients who were prone to neglecting themselves as I had a natural knack of bringing self-care into the conversations and they usually felt better afterwards.
I applied for the Royal Air Force (RAF) when I left university. I did my 10 weeks of basic training and passed out as a non-commissioned officer. I was posted to Portsmouth where I did a clinical rotation in surgical, medical, and then a specialism as part of my preceptorship.
As part of your military duty, you would be on call for the non-commissioned officers on a rota. I was told by my chain of command to go to the hospital as they needed someone to make teas & coffees for silver command. This was at the start of the pandemic, and I ended up staying, growing, and managing a team of military personnel for three months to manage the PPE distribution, collating data about PPE usage where the data collected was being fed into the national statistics, and I fit-tested hundreds of hospital staff. The experience gained was operations management, data analysing, and working alongside NHS directors. After this I passed the team back over to the civilian procurement team and trained in critical care for a couple of years at the height of the pandemic; here I would induct the military nurses to critical care and organise training days as part of my additional duties.
I then left the military to work in a care home as a clinical deputy manager as I wanted more career freedom to explore areas of care I would not be exposed to if I was to stay. In this job role I would do training sessions, quality audits, covering shifts, rota management, manage complaints, adhere to CQC regulations and complete MDT meetings.
I moved onto being a data analyst as I liked the idea of learning more about conditions at a deeper level and speaking to a wide range of different people day to day, this role improved my report-writing skills, reporting evidence-based recommendations, and building a rapport in a short time frame.
My experience and expertise
– First Class BSc in Adult nursing.
– Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) Silver award
– The National competency Framework for Registered Nurses in Adult Critical Care.
– Diploma in Junior Management and Leadership Course in the RAF.
– Welfare Officer Course.
– Certificate of Higher education in Health and Social care level 2 & 3.
– Member of the RCN
Why I chose Helping Hands
I chose to work at Helping Hands because I found it rare that a home care company has a whole team dedicated to quality assurance and the staff’s overall satisfaction and enjoyment of the job was good. I truly feel I have done a full circle as home care is close to my heart. I am looking forward to getting to know the role better and make a positive impact on the care provided by Helping Hands.
I always strive to be better, and I felt my values to give effective and safe care married up with Helping Hands and I am looking forward to the future. When I saw this job was advertised, I jumped at the opportunity as I felt it’s a great way to combine my clinical knowledge and autonomous working in a team of nurses.
