Sue Dart is a Lead TB Nurse at Barts Health Trust. With over three decades in nursing, Sue’s work has been strengthened by her kindness for patients, colleagues and local communities.
Sue Dart started her nursing career at 19, studying and working in Cardiff. After a brief stint in Canada, she returned to the UK and began working in the Mildmay hospice in 1991, supporting patients affected by HIV. She then began work as a nurse specialist in tuberculosis (TB) with Camden Primary Care Trust, based at UCLH and Whittington Hospital. She also gained a MSc in Medical Anthropology at Brunel University.
With her energy and ‘can-do’ attitude, Sue plays a crucial role in facilitating research into TB. She liaises between researchers and patients, exchanges feedback and outcomes, and supports her research nurses with warmth and kindness.
Throughout her career, Sue has been an integral partner to UCL, collaborating with leading researchers such as Professor Ibrahim Abubakar to support important research studies. This includes the PREDICT-TB study, which evaluates diagnostic approaches, the RID-TB study which explores treatments for latent TB, and TB-REACH, which is improving assessment and management of TB infection in underserved populations.
TB is one of the biggest infectious diseases worldwide. And in the UK, our numbers are going up. Often people say: ‘Oh, isn't that a Victorian disease?’ or, ‘it was cured with the vaccine, wasn’t it?’ But it's never gone away. It's always been around. It’s a disease that can affect anyone, but often it does affect underserved and deprived communities.
Sue is committed to improving the experiences of patients, always finding solutions to barriers to recruitment or trial delivery and preferring a more holistic approach to nursing and care. She is sensitive to how social and psychological factors impact patients, health professionals and how they respond to different scenarios or diseases.
She is also passionate about educating those outside the health service about TB. She has recently worked with community groups in East London to raise awareness of TB symptoms and support those affected by the disease and even worked with community healthcare workers in Cambodia.
You do see a lot of vulnerable people, people who have been excluded or not necessarily respected. A good TB doctor or nurse might be the first individual that those people meet who actually listens to and value them.
For Sue, this is integral to treatment and care. Building a positive relationship and rapport ultimately leads to positive health outcomes.
For me, it’s about trying to support important research to happen. It's about care and compassion for patients as well as supporting staff and colleagues in their development and progression. It’s probably very basic, but it’s about being kind.
