Jacqui Holmes

My name is Jacqui Holmes, and I am an Operational Lead for Inpatient Physiotherapy at Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Prior to this, I enjoyed my role as a Senior Physiotherapist and Team Lead in Health Care for Older People.

I am a proud Allied Health Professional and member of the British Geriatric Society whose ethos, where frailty is everyone’s business, strongly aligns with my passion to improve care for older people as an inclusive multidisciplinary team. I consider the role of NAHP Deputy Chair an exciting opportunity to integrate knowledge, experience and innovation to empower and celebrate the strong voice of Nurses and AHPs in leading improvements and supporting the incredible work of the BGS to deliver quality care for older people.

I currently lead on improvement projects connected to Kingston and Richmond NHS Trust’s Quality Priority to prevent deconditioning, something I am hugely passionate about. My experience of improving health care for older people includes, but is not limited to, engagement and leadership in the National Reconditioning Games launched by the Emergency Care Improvement Support Team (ECIST) in 2022 from which my work was recognised with a high commendation at the 2023 HSJ Patient Safety awards. I have since launched ‘Eat, Drink, Dress, Move’ as a multidisciplinary approach to care to prevent deconditioning. Through this work, I have connected with a wide network of health care professionals both nationally and internationally, with whom I frequently share my learning, experience and advice to inspire their own implementation of similar projects.

My communication, leadership and influence has also created opportunities to spread and share work with ECIST, the CSP’s AGILE Professional Network for Physiotherapists working with Older People, and Health Service 360’s #EndPJparalysis Global Summit and Emergency Care Conference. I endeavour to translate these skills to promote and grow the NAHP membership, expand our collective voice and ensure NAHP representation across the BGS at an exciting time where we can really influence and inform policy, guidance and public awareness.

I care deeply about issues relating to access to rehabilitation, tackling ageism and workforce challenges. With the number of people over the age of 85 expected to double by 2045 in the UK, I am driven to consider ways of working better together as interprofessional teams across the patient pathway, to deliver community services which help more older people to stay at home and to support the expansion of frailty virtual wards and access to rehabilitation for more sustainable management of frailty, building on key messages from BGS “Reablement, Rehabilitation, Recovery: Everyone’s business” report.

I am proactive, with an improvement mindset, and I am passionate about empowering Nursing and AHPs to engage in continuous improvement, research, leadership, education and clinical development to deliver better care for older people across all four pillars of practice. I hope that this will attract and retain more staff working in care for older people, to strengthen our workforce during challenging times.

Thank you for your consideration, together we will improve care for older people!