Ms Nichola Crust National Investigator

About me

Nichola is a GenerationQ Fellow and National Investigator, Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch.

·       Registered General Nurse – NHS 29 years

·       National Investigator

·       Health Foundation GenerationQ fellow 

Nichola is a National Investigator with the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch. Nichola has worked at a strategic level in a variety of healthcare settings spanning primary and secondary care.  Her roles have included professional nurse leadership and mentoring of nursing teams, mobilisation of new services including service and workforce redesign, and training and education in incident investigation. Nichola has developed clinical governance systems in both primary and secondary care, established systems for identifying risks and has worked collaboratively with local and national bodies relating to healthcare. Her key qualities are empathy, ability to build rapport and ability to influence. Nichola has completed The Health Foundation’s GenerationQ leadership and quality improvement programme and holds an MSc in Leadership (Quality Improvement).

In 2015 she became Head of Nursing and Clinical Quality in the first UK health alliance – a partnership of the main health organisations in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, which had come together to deliver elective care services in community and primary care settings. Her role included managing the flow of money across a health economy, and supporting mobilisation and provision of care. She was responsible for professional leadership and mentoring of the nursing team, which spanned eight community hospital sites; ensuring highly reliable, quality care services; workforce strategy for the Alliance; and delivery of an effective governance function.

Nichola joined the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) in March 2017 as a National Investigator. The National Safety Investigator role interested her because it has a focus on leadership and quality improvement and Nichola has a real desire and enthusiasm for leading and influencing improvement work which will directly impact on patient and staff safety. Nichola led an Action Learning Set with senior professionals on behalf of NHSE North focussed on improving the practice and standard of serious incident investigations.