Professor Northway awarded Queen’s Nursing Institute fellowship

Professor Ruth Northway OBE, Emeritus Professor at the University of South Wales (USW), has been awarded a Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) Fellowship.

QNI Fellows are known leaders within their sphere of expertise, with a high profile in the health and care sector, and the respect and recognition of their peers.

QNI held its annual Awards Ceremonies on 8 December at Friends House in London. Two ceremonies were held and included the presentation of some of the most prestigious awards in nursing.

Ruth became the United Kingdom’s first Professor of Learning Disability Nursing. As an academic, Ruth specialises in learning disabilities, participatory action research, and safeguarding.

After two decades at the USW, Ruth has recently retired and is now an Emeritus Professor at the institution. Ruth has also held a Visiting Professorship at Ulster University’s School of Nursing. She is a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Intellectual Disabilities and was previously the journal’s editor-in-chief from 2013 to 2019. In 2011, she became the chair of the Royal College of Nursing Research Society.

Ruth has also led the Learning Disability Ministerial Advisory Group within the Welsh Government. She was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in 2003. Ruth was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to learning disability nursing. In 2018, Ruth won Nursing Times’ Chief Nursing Officers’ Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Ruth said: “Receiving the letter saying I had been awarded this fellowship was a huge, but very nice, surprise. I feel both humbled and honoured to receive this award both at a personal level and in recognition of the important contribution that community learning disability nurses make to improving the health and well-being of those they support, and to the wider community nursing family.”