Dr. Nicola Ryley is the Chief Nursing & Midwifery Officer for Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) in the State of Qatar. Nicola is responsible for the strategic direction of the nursing and midwifery services, the professional development and regulation of over 11,500 nurses and midwives as well as ensuring and enabling the nursing and midwifery contribution to patient safety and quality of care. Dr Ryley is Co-Chair of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Nursing Now (Qatar) Board and leads for nursing and midwifery on national programmes.
Before taking up post in Doha, Dr. Ryley was Chief Nurse at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and prior to that, Executive Director of Nursing at the Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust in England, where she was also the regional nursing lead for service transformation. With a career spanning over 35 years, she has held senior clinical, operational and leadership roles across a diverse range of NHS organizations that both provide and commission healthcare for adults and children. Dr. Ryley has extensive experience in acute, community, mental health and primary care settings. She has successfully led services across all aspects of scheduled and unscheduled care as well as those for a national Children’s Hospital, tertiary facilities at one of the largest University Teaching Hospitals in the UK and community services across the largest geographical area within the UK.
Holding nursing registrations for both adults and children, Dr. Ryley has a Master’s degree in nursing science and a Diploma in Child Health from the University of Wales College of Medicine; a Post Graduate Diploma in Education & Training; and an earned Doctorate in Nursing Science (with the thesis centring on the impact of clinical leadership on patient outcomes) from Swansea University. She holds an honorary senior lecturer role with the University of Cardiff, is a scholar of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and is an honorary associate professor at the University of Plymouth. In addition, Dr. Ryley has provided advice at government level on a range of professional issues including nursing and midwifery revalidation; advanced nursing practice; clinical/academic careers; acuity and dependency models; post registration education and clinical staffing models. She was appointed to two national boards advising on professional regulation and health/social care information governance.
Dr Ryley is driven to ensuring and enabling services that are responsive to the needs of patients and deliver safe, high quality, compassionate care.