About Us
What We Do
The General Nursing Council Trust seeks to promote the development of nursing for the benefit of society. We do this by funding research into nursing policy and practice. The Trustees are also committed to advancing the education of student nurses and further education of Registered Nurses. We do this by funding research and through leadership scholarships offered in partnership with the Florence Nightingale Foundation.Each year we issue a call for research grant applications with a specified theme. The specific focus of this year’s call is on our Grants page.
Who We Are
The General Nursing Council Trust is an independent charitable trust. The Trust was set up in 1983 when the General Nursing Council for England and Wales, the regulatory body for the nursing profession in England and Wales during the preceding 60 years, was abolished under the Nurses and Midwives and Health Visitors Act 1979.The funds held by the General Nursing Council Trust were originally contributed by nurses and were transferred over to the Trust by the General Nursing Council.The organisation’s investments were transferred to the General Nursing Council Trust and are used to generate income to support the charitable work of the Trust.
GNCT Trustees
Professor Annie Topping, Chair
Professor Daniel Kelly
Professor Arlene Wellman MBE
Flo Panel-Coates
Bridie Kent
Dr Mel Nakisa
Dr Susan Procter
Chair
Dr Susan Procter was first appointed as a Professor of Nursing at Northumbria University in 1995. Since then, she has held professorial posts at City University, London and Buckinghamshire New University. Throughout her career she has endeavoured to bridge the gap between academia and practice holding a number of joint posts, the most recent being an honorary post with Imperial College Health Care NHS Trust. She is very supportive of practice based research and of building clinical research capacity in nursing and midwifery. She has supervised several clinicians through to obtaining their doctorates. She is both pleased and honoured to be a trustee for the General Nursing Council Trust helping to shape the Trust to support the building of clinical nursing research capacity and development of excellence in clinical nursing research in England and Wales.
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Professor Annie Topping
Professor Annie Topping is a nurse, health service researcher and educator. Annie has had a long and varied career clinically in surgical and cancer nursing, in higher education (Universities of Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and South Bank), and overseas in the State of Qatar. She currently holds a joint appointment with the University of Birmingham and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and leads on nurse research capacity and capability building. Her own research is concerned with improving patient experience, outcomes and care delivery.
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Professor Daniel Kelly
Professor Daniel Kelly has held the Royal College of Nursing Chair of Nursing Research at Cardiff University since 2011. His career-long interest has been in cancer care research and education. Current research interests include cancer prevention, especially the potential of greater awareness of HPV vaccination and screening to protect people from cancer. Formerly President of the European Oncology Nursing Society, he has co-chaired the European Cancer Organisation’s HPV Action Network since 2019, and is also a former Board member of European Cancer Organisation.
He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom and was awarded the OBE from Queen Elizabeth in the 2021 new year honour’s list for his national and international contribution to research and education in cancer care. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Edinburgh University, University College London & Oxford Brookes University. He is also a Trustee at St Christopher’s Hospice London and a Public Governor at King's College London NHS Foundation Trust.
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Dr Mel Nakisa
Secretary
Dr Mel Nakisa is an experienced research administrator. Previous roles have included supporting nursing research at Buckinghamshire New University. Prior to that, as Research Project Manager at the Royal National Institute for Deaf people, Mel set up and managed their research funding programme.
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Professor Arlene Wellman MBE
Professor Arlene Wellman MBE is the first Group Chief Nursing Officer for St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Healthcare Group since the group was formed in February 2022. Arlene qualified as a general registered nurse in Trinidad and migrated to the UK with the intention of training as a midwife, however she fell in love with elderly care nursing and has now more than 20 years’ experience in this speciality. She continues to contribute to this field as the SRO for the Capital Nurse Older Person’s Qualification in Specialism development program.
Arlene is the one of the most senior internationally trained nurses in the UK and was awarded an MBE in recognition of her contribution to nursing as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2021. She has a first-class B.Sc. Hons degree in Health and Social Care for Older People, an M.Sc. in Clinical Healthcare Practice, a Florence Nightingale Leadership Fellow and is a visiting Professor with Kingston University
As Executive Director for Nursing, Arlene has responsibility for the nursing, midwifery, healthcare support and allied healthcare professional workforce. She is also an Executive Maternity Safety Champion and Baby Friendly Guardian and the Director of Infection Prevention and Control (DiPC) across the St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Healthcare Group. Arlene is also a WRES expert and Executive sponsor for the Racial Equality and Cultural Heritage staff network at ESTH.
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Flo Panel-Coates
Flo Panel-Coates was Executive Chief Nurse at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), providing acute and specialist services in six hospitals in central London. She held the role between April 2015 to April 2023, stepping down to recover from Long Covid. In her role as Emergency Planning Executive, Flo led the Trust’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and also held the roles of Director of Organisational Development (February 2021 to April 2023) and Interim Deputy Chief Executive (March 2021 to September 2021) at UCLH.
Before this, Flo was Chief Nurse at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University NHS Trust from October 2012 to March 2015. Prior to that, she was Director of Nursing and Quality at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust from August 2008 until September 2012.
Flo is a clinical nurse by background, having spent much of her earlier nursing career working in emergency and urgent care settings. She has been a Non-Executive Director of NHS Innovations South-East since 2012 and in Autumn 2024 joined the General Nursing Council Trust for England and Wales as the NMC nominated trustee.
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Bridie Kent
Professor Bridie Kent was appointed as Professor in Leadership in Nursing at the University of Plymouth in 2013. She has a background in both clinical and academic appointments, resulting in extensive experience in leadership, quality improvement, practice change, health services education and implementation research. For the last 20 years she has held clinical academic positions in the UK, New Zealand and Australia and during this time has also been appointed to senior academic positions, including Head of School of Nursing and Midwifery and Executive Dean at the University of Plymouth. She has been a Non-Executive Director of the Board at the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust since 2021. Currently, she is leading a NIHR Global Health and Policy Systems grant in which the team are co-designing rehabilitation services for those living in rural communities in the Philippines following stroke. Her research has resulted in practice and policy changes, making a difference to the quality of care received by patients.
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