28 April 2023 | JW Marriott Grosvenor House Hotel

Colette Datt MBE (RGN, RN Child, BSC (Child Health) MSc (Allergy) is the Associate Director of Nursing for Children and Young People at North Middlesex Hospital. She was previously the Lead Nurse for Patient Experience and Public Participation at West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust (WHHT). Whilst at WHHT she was an active member of the National Patient Experience Group and championed several patient experience innovations at WHHT during the initial COVID 19 pandemic. This included setting up of a family liaison service to support visiting and supported the set-up of a coproduction board with the local Health watch.
Colette joined North Middlesex in January 2021. Prior to this she worked at Whittington Health as an NIHR 70@70 senior nurse leader championing nurse led research across the organisation. Colette also worked as nurse consultant for children and young people whilst at Whittington Health and completed an MSC Allergy at Imperial, where she won a prize for her research project on smoking cessation in adolescents which was highlighted as the allergy project in her year, most likely to improve allergy outcomes. She also initiated and led the asthma friendly schools project in Islington. Colette was an active member of the Healthy London Partnership Asthma group – who wrote the HLP asthma guidelines and oversaw peer reviews of asthma services across NCL. She was also a clinical member of the ICS group and did a 3 year tenure on the Royal College of Nursing specialist paediatric forum.
Whilst at Whittington Health she won the Nursing Times Nurse Leader of the Year in 2018 for her leadership of several co-produced patient experience projects with CYP and external charities such as Ambitious about Autism and Family Action. She also won a national patient experience award in 2019 for a coproduction project with young carers. This was in addition to two further National awards with her teams for the development of innovative services, including the asthma friendly schools project in Islington and innovative group consultations for asthma.
Colette has undertaken a Florence Nightingale (FNF) Aspiring Nurse Director scholarship and the Windsor Leadership Programme. Colette actively champions compassionate leadership and patient experience. She is very keen on supporting the development of the more junior members of our teams and she actively mentors within her trust and is also a mentor for FNF and for the UCLH paediatric BSC. She is currently working with her trust, FNF and 3 local Health Education Institution’s piloting a coproduced leadership programme for student nurses. She is keen to ensure student nurses and medical students are supported to work together in multi-disciplinary teams to learn from each other, to have a voice/perspective in service development and delivery and to undertake quality improvement projects.
She passionately believes in and champions service users to have a say in their health services and has previously led and currently leads CYP and Parent Forums. She is focused on merging co-production, always events and Quality Improvement methodology. She is determined to use her leadership skills, knowledge and experience to positively influence patient outcomes and staff experience and wellbeing.
Colette has won several other national awards, as well as being the official ‘lamp bearer’ of 2022 at the annual Florence Nightingale commemoration service at Westminster Abbey.
Colette was awarded an MBE by HM Elizabeth II, in September 2022 for services to nursing.