Karen Smith is currently employed as a Nurse consultant which is a joint appointment between Cardiology within NHS Tayside and the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Dundee.
Karen has been active in the field of cardiovascular nursing since 1987. In 1990 she was awarded a Part Time research fellowship from the SODOH, which led to the completion of a Ph.D. Her clinical remit involves leading the development and evaluation of cardiac nursing services, which is complemented by research and teaching in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. In 2000 she was awarded a Nurse Fellow Ship form the European Society of Cardiology for her contribution to cardiovascular nursing. She held the post as the lead clinician for the Managed clinical network for Coronary Heart Disease, NHS Tayside from 2004 to 2007.
Karen remains active in clinical practice, education and research in cardiovascular nursing, supervising and supporting nurses both in clinical practice and within higher education. She is committed to supporting the development of research capacity and capability within NMAHP’s and has combined this with the development and evaluation of person centered cardiovascular nursing services. She is actively involved in education of health care teams locally and nationally and is module leader for post-registration and post graduate courses in cardiovascular care for nurses and AHP’s, as well as the development of on line educational materials through Heart-E.
Karen has been actively involved in professional organizations, national working groups focusing on cardiac service provision. This has included the position as Chair of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) working group on Cardiovascular Nursing (2000-2002). She has been an active member of various strategic working groups for CHD services within the Scottish Government, SIGN (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network) and Quality Improvement Scotland (QIS) and contributed to the development and evaluation of services and national standards for CHD. She currently sits on the Familial Arrhythmia Network Scotland (FANS) steering group, with a remit to take forward a subgroup for NMAHPS to support service development, explore patient experience and organise educational events for the health care teams. She is also a member of the editorial board for the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.
