Vicky Ridgway

Professor Vicky Ridgway is a Professor of Nursing and Associate Dean for Partnership, Enterprise and Portfolio Development at the University of Chester's Faculty of Health, Medicine and Society. She leads strategic initiatives supporting faculty development and new program creation. With over 30 years as a registered nurse, her career spans gerontology, nurse education, and creative health innovations. Her research focuses on aging, nursing pedagogy, and practice learning, with notable work on visual methodologies to assess student attitudes toward older adults and creative health placements for nursing students. She has held roles including Director of Pre-Registration Nursing and Senior University Teaching Fellow, and has developed programs such as the Creative Health Placement. Ridgway holds a PhD exploring visual perceptions of aging and a MA in Gerontology. She collaborates with NHS England on healthcare workforce initiatives and serves on the Nursing Older People journal's peer review board.

Education: PhD (University of Chester, 2015), MA Gerontology (University of Salford, 2001), PGDE (University of Liverpool, 2005), BSc Nursing (Northumbria University, 1993). Certifications include Senior Fellow status from Advance HE (2014).

Research Interests: Creative health integration in nursing education, gerontology, nurse education curriculum development, visual research methods, and interprofessional practice learning. Recent work evaluates creative health placements' impact on student knowledge and wellbeing, demonstrating their value for nursing practice.

Grants/Funding: Includes HEE projects on reducing nursing student attrition (2022), foundation year programs (2020-2021), and outreach programs (2019-2020). Current consulting includes advising the Royal College of Nursing on arts integration in nursing practice.

Labs/Teams: Leads the National Centre for Creative Health at University of Chester, collaborating on workforce development initiatives. Supervises postgraduate research on topics like transgender healthcare legal frameworks and occupational therapy equity.