Anne Marie Rafferty, Baroness Rafferty (born 7 May 1958) is a British

nurse Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alle ...

, academic and researcher. She is the

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of nursing policy and the former dean of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

. She served as 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 ...

from 2019 to 2021. She is a fellow of the

, the

American Academy of Nursing The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) is a professional organization that generates, synthesizes, and disseminates nursing knowledge to contribute to health policy and practice for the benefit of the public and the nursing profession. Founded in ...

, and the

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academy, National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its ...

. In 2008, she was seconded to the Department of Health to work with Lord Ara Darzi on the Next Stage Review of the

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

and was subsequently appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(CBE) for services to healthcare. She was a member of the Prime Minister's Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery between 2009 and 2010, Front Line Care (Report published 2010). and a member of the Parliamentary Review of Health and Social Care in Wales which reported in 2018. She is a current member of the NHS Assembly. In 2020, she was appointed

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(DBE) for services to nursing.

Early life and education

Rafferty was born and raised in

Kirkcaldy Kirkcaldy ( ; ; ) is a town and former royal burgh in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It is about north of Edinburgh and south-southwest of Dundee. The town had a recorded population of 49,460 in 2011, making it Fife's second-largest s ...

Fife Fife ( , ; ; ) is a council areas of Scotland, council area and lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area in Scotland. A peninsula, it is bordered by the Firth of Tay to the north, the North Sea to the east, the Firth of Forth to the s ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. Her father was a coal miner and her mother a nurse. Rafferty says that it was hearing her mother's stories of nursing prisoners of war during the Second World War that inspired her to become a nurse. Rafferty attended St Marie's Primary School and St Andrew's High School, both in Kirkcaldy, Fife. She graduated from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

in 1982 with a BSc in nursing studies. From 1982 to 1986 she worked as a staff nurse and research assistant at the

Queen's medical centre The Queen's Medical Centre (popularly known as QMC, Queen's Med or Queen's) is a teaching hospital situated in Nottingham, England. Until February 2012, when it was surpassed by the Royal London Hospital, it was the largest hospital in the Unit ...

, Nottingham while studying for her

MPhil A Master of Philosophy (MPhil or PhM; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. The name of the degree is most often abbreviated MPhil (or, at times, as PhM in other countries). MPhil are awarded to postgraduate students after completing at least ...

in Surgery at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

. Rafferty studied for her

DPhil A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

(Modern History) at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

and was a student of Green College (now Green Templeton College). During her studies, Rafferty worked part-time as a nurse teacher and lecturer at the

John Radcliffe Hospital John Radcliffe Hospital (informally known as the JR or the John Radcliffe) is a large tertiary teaching hospital in Oxford, England. It forms part of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is named after John Radcliffe (physician) ...

and

Open University The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

. In 1989, she was awarded her DPhil and is widely cited as the first nurse to be awarded a DPhil from the University of Oxford. In 1994, Rafferty was awarded a

Harkness Fellowship The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several co ...

to study nursing policy at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, where she worked with Linda Aiken on the role of nursing in the

Clinton Administration Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following his victory over Republican in ...

health care reform agenda.

Career

Rafferty is an historian, healthcare workforce and policy researcher. Her research into the healthcare workforce was the first to establish the link between nurse staffing and patient mortality rates in the UK. She designed the Culture of Care Barometer which has been adopted by the hospital outcomes research network in Europe. Rafferty has worked clinically as a nurse at the

Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) was established in 1729, and is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. The new buildings of 1879 were claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later on, the Empire."In Com ...

, the Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, and the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. In 1991, she took up the position of lecturer and admissions tutor at the then newly established Department of Nursing and Midwifery studies at the

. For the academic year 1994-1995 she was a Harkness Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently took up the post of senior lecturer at the

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public university, public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a constituent college, member institution of the University of London that specialises in public hea ...

where she established the Centre for Policy in Nursing Research. Rafferty was promoted to Reader and became head of the Health Services Research Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2001. She subsequently moved to

in 2004 to become Professor of Nursing Policy and Dean of the

Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care is an academic faculty within King's College London. The faculty is the world's first nursing school to be continuously connected to a fully serving hospital and medic ...

. She stood down as Dean in September 2011 to become Director of Academic Outreach. Rafferty has subsequently been co-director of the Wellcome Centre for Humanities and Health and is currently co-director of the Health and Social Care Workforce Policy Research Unit at King's College London. In 2008, Rafferty was seconded to the

Department of Health A health department or health ministry is a part of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of the citizenry. Subnational entities, such as states, counties and cities, often also operate a health department of their o ...

to advise on nursing policy for the then

Minister of Health A health minister is the member of a country's government typically responsible for protecting and promoting public health and providing welfare spending and other social security services. Some governments have separate ministers for mental heal ...

Lord Ara Darzi and the

Chief Nursing Officer Nursing management consists of the performance of the leadership functions of governance and decision-making within organizations employing nurses. It includes processes common to all management like planning, organizing, staffing, directing an ...

Professor Dame Christine Beasley during the Next Stage Review of the NHS. In 2009, she served on the Prime Minister's Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery. Rafferty co-led the Student Commission on the Future of the NHS which was supported by

NHS England NHS England, formally the NHS Commissioning Board for England, is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. It oversees the budget, planning, delivery and day-to-day operation of the commissioning si ...

, and was a member of the Parliamentary Review of Health and Social Care in Wales which reported in 2018. She is a member of the NHS Assembly. Rafferty served as a member of the nursing and midwifery panel in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise 2008, and as a member of the allied health professions, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy sub-panel for

Research Excellence Framework The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a research impact evaluation of British Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise and it was first used in 2014 to assess the period 2008–2013. REF is ...

2014 and 2021. Rafferty holds honorary appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Poly University, Hong Kong. She is visiting professor at the

National Institute for Health and Care Research The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the British government's major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research. With a budget of over £1.2 billion in 2020–21, its mission is to "impr ...

(NIHR) funded Patient Safety Translational Research Centre at the Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust. Rafferty holds honorary doctorates from the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee is a public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its ...

and

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a Public university, public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus university, campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and twenty-six schools of ...

. In 2018, it was announced that Rafferty would become the next President of the

(RCN), a position she held from January 2019 to July 2021. Previously she had acted as the RCN representative on the Health Quality Improvement Partnership and was also a member of the RCN's Safe Staffing Expert Reference Group. Rafferty is the founding director and President of the European Nursing Research Foundation.

Honours and awards

Rafferty was appointed

(CBE) in the

2009 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 2009 were announced on 31 December 2008 in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Cook Islands, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Christopher and Nevis,Saint Christopher. t ...

for services to healthcare and

(DBE) in the

2020 Birthday Honours The Queen's Birthday Honours for 2020 are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded ...

for services to nursing. Rafferty holds fellowships from

(2002), the Queens Nursing Institute (2005) and the

(2011). She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science in 2019 and a Member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

in 2020. She is also a Fellow of King's College London where she has been the professor of nursing policy since 2004. Rafferty has been the recipient of various awards including the Nursing Times Leadership Award in 2014 and Health Services Journal Top 100 Clinical Leaders Award in 2015. She was inducted onto the Sigma Theta Tau International Hall of Fame in 2016 and in 2017 Rafferty was nominated as one of the 70 most influential nurses in the first 70 years of the National Health Service. Rafferty was nominated by

Keir Starmer Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and lawyer who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024 and as Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He previously ...

for a life peerage on 20 December 2024 as part of the 2024 Political Peerages. She was created ''Baroness Rafferty, of Kirkcaldy in the County of Fife'' on 10 February 2025.

References

External links

* at King's College London
Higher Education Funding Council for England website
*[https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/anne-marie-rafferty(f5c15b7c-a42f-4c74-97a6-267a280d395a)/publications.html?type=%2Fdk%2Fatira%2Fpure%2Fresearchoutput%2Fresearchoutputtypes%2Fcontributiontojournal%2Farticle Complete list of publications] {{DEFAULTSORT:Rafferty, Annemarie 1958 births Living people Nursing researchers Scottish nurses British nursing administrators [ ategory:Labour Party (UK) life peers Life peers created by Charles III Life peeresses created by Charles III Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal College of Nursing Academics of King's College London Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Alumni of the University of Nottingham Alumni of Green College, Oxford Academics of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Fellows of King's College London Members of Academia Europaea Harkness Fellows Nursing school deans British nurses Members of the National Academy of Medicine Presidents of the Royal College of Nursing