Andrea Spyropoulos, RGN, SCM, RNT, is a British nurse, clinical strategist and a past president of the

Royal College of Nursing The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is a registered trade union and professional body in the United Kingdom for those in the profession of nursing. It was founded in 1916 as the College of Nursing, receiving its royal charter in 1928. Queen Eliz ...

(RCN).

Early life and education

Born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

, her career started with nursing and has spanned a number of disciplines including

midwifery Midwifery is the health science and health profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period (including care of the newborn), in addition to the sexual and reproductive health of women throughout their lives. In many cou ...

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

and the planning and development of new

hospital A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized Medical Science, health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically ...

projects. She obtained a number of academic degrees, i.e. a BA in Health Studies, an

LLB (Hons) A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

Law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

and an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

degree in

Medical Law Medical law is the branch of law which concerns the prerogatives and responsibilities of medical professionals and the rights of the patient. It should not be confused with medical jurisprudence, which is a branch of medicine, rather than a br ...

. She furthermore received a Diploma in Professional Studies in Nursing (DPSN) and qualified as a

Registered General Nurse Nursing in the United Kingdom is the profession of ''registered nurses'' and nursing associates in the primary and secondary care of patients. It has evolved from assisting physicians to encompass a variety of professional roles. Over 700,000 ...

(RGN), a

State Certified Midwife Midwives in the United States assist childbearing women during pregnancy, labor and birth, and the postpartum period. Some midwives also provide primary care for women including well-woman exams, health promotion, and disease prevention, family pl ...

(SCM) and a Registered Nurse Teacher (RNT).

Career

Spyropoulos trained as a nurse at the former Royal Liverpool United Hospitals Group in 1976. She has more than 30 years nursing experience, including working as a Midwife and then a senior lecturer at

Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool John Moores University (abbreviated LJMU) is a public university, public research university in the city of Liverpool, England. The university can trace its origins to the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts, established in 1823. This ...

, teaching Health Care and later Medical Law. She worked on the trust board of Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology for 9 years as a non-executive director. During her term she chaired Independent Panel Reviews and the Research Governance Committee as well as sitting on the performance, audit, investment and remuneration committees. She stepped down from this role on 31 January 2007. In 2003, she joined Health Care Projects Social Infrastructure. Now working as a Clinical Strategist, she provides expert clinical advice to hospital design teams.

Work with the Royal College of Nursing

Spyropoulos became a member of the Royal College of Nursing when she was 18. Appointed as a steward in 1988, since that time she has held a number of other unpaid roles within the organisation including positions as Safety Representative, Council Member and chair of Nursing Practice and Policy Committee before being elected to the role of president in 2010. She has represented the RCN in several fora, including at its Congress events and notably also at conferences hosted in the UK Parliament's House of Commons. Spyropoulos thanked RCN members and colleagues stating that she was "really looking forward to representing the RCN and its members at the highest level.". A month later she represented the RCN at the European Parliament's 'EU Public Health Alliance'.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spyropoulos, Andrea Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Nurses from Liverpool British nursing administrators Presidents of the Royal College of Nursing