‘I wanted a career where I would be trying to make a difference’

She went into higher education to improve the quality of patient care, but after becoming vice-chancellor of a Yorkshire university, Shirley Congdon wants to challenge the structural issues in society holding people back. Ruth Dacey reports.

AFTER HEARING of selfless wartime nursing efforts from members of her family, Professor Shirley Congdon was determined to follow in the footsteps of her heroines with a successful career in healthcare.

Originally qualifying as a registered nurse, she has gone on to be a trailblazer in higher education and held leadership positions in three universities, including her current role as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Bradford, the first female to take the role since the institution was founded in 1966.

She was born in the small mining village of Blackhall Colliery in Durham in 1961, and inspired at a young age after hearing memories from her great aunts Gladys and Ann Hartley, who were nurses during and after World War Two, Prof Congdon went on to qualify as a nurse in 1982.

Fast forward 38 years, as the first women to hold the ViceChancellor role at the University of Bradford and as a leading voice for universities in a regional economic and business thinktank, she has her sights set on leading the way for equality and diversity and challenging the structural issues in society that hold people back.

The 59-year-old said she had always been determined to work in healthcare, an aspiration which was cemented during secondary school work experience at Hartlepool General Hospital while helping on a ward for elderly patients in 1977.

Prof Congdon said: “My family members who worked as nurses during and after the war became significant people in my life. I listened to their experiences during family visits and was amazed about what they had done.”

She added: “I wanted a career where I would be working with people and trying to make a difference. When people are in vulnerable situations and they are not well, that level of connectedness you get with them when trying to support them is really rewarding.”

During her three years of training to become a nurse, she said she was deeply affected by experiences she had in hospitals and mental health institutions in Durham and Hartlepool. This included work in Winterton Hospital in County Durham, a mental health institution which has since been demolished after services transferred as part of a move to create mental health community services and acute mental health services in units in general hospitals.

Prof Congdon said it was a time when wards were locked and people were in these institutions, which were still referred to by many as “the bins,” for most of their lives.

“It was still the time when people with mental health difficulties were significantly stigmatised,” Prof Congdon said.

“A lot of people were institutionalised... and would end up spending all their lives there.”

The mother-of four entered the world of academia as a lecturer practitioner after being the first in her family to go to university. Prof Congdon completed a diploma, a degree, a masters degree and a teaching qualification part-time over five years while working, from Teesside University, the University of Durham and later the University of Bath.

She said: “My real motivation to want to go on and study in higher education was to try and improve the quality of patient care and at that time evidencebased practice and research in healthcare was really in its infancy.”

Before taking over the role as the University of Bradford’s ViceChancellor from predecessor Professor Brian Cantor last summer, she had previously worked in higher education for 28 years, including time in a number of senior leadership roles, before joining Bradford as dean of health studies in 2009.

Speaking about what attracted her to Yorkshire and Bradford, she said: “It was a real opportunity for me to come and make a difference.

“Yorkshire itself is an amazing county, there’s lots of diversity and it really is a great place to live.

“No one can ever take away the beauty of the county. It has such different aspects to offer from the Yorkshire Dales through to the great cities and the incredible culture and heritage it has.”

With significant expertise in health and social care, cultural change and evidence practice, Prof Congdon is a leading voice for the NHS Yorkshire and Humber regional leadership council and the Royal College of Nursing.

She is also playing a major role in universities unlocking her area’s economic potential after recently being appointed to the Leeds City Region’s Local Enterprise Partnership.

The coronavirus pandemic is at the fore in any discussion of future plans, and the Vice-Chancellor praised the “incredible contribution” of Bradford in the fight against Covid-19 across Yorkshire, including the deployment of more than 400 of midwives, paramedics and other healthcare students into frontline healthcare roles.

She added new and current students from the University of Bradford and universities across Yorkshire would be “crucial” in playing their role in the recovery of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We need universities even more in a post-Covid world,” she said. “The skills students will develop mean they can go out and contribute to solving problems like Covid-19 and other future pandemics.”