Judith Hill

Dame Judith Hill (born January 1948) is an English nurse who served as the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) for Northern Ireland from 1995 to 2005 and later as the chief executive of the Northern Ireland Hospice. During her tenure as CNO, she oversaw the introduction of nurse prescribing and the integration of nursing education into the university system. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2012 for her contributions to nursing and palliative care.

Career

Early career Hill began her nursing career at St Thomas' Hospital in London before moving into nurse education. She served as a nurse director in both the Wessex and the South West Regional Health Authorities in England. She took on the role amidst a challenging political landscape, navigating periods of direct rule and local governance. As part of this work, she identified challenges, noting in the same interview that Northern Ireland's cancer services had "some very poor results in relation to the rest of UK and Europe" that required remedial work.

For her services to nursing, Hill was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2001 New Year Honours. That same year, her office was criticised by Pauline Hunter, the RCN's head of education in Northern Ireland, for allegedly not commissioning enough nurse practitioner posts to support key projects. A spokesperson for Hill's department responded by stating they fully supported the role of nurse practitioners and noted there were 30 such posts across the province. In a 2003 editorial, Hill identified four areas for nursing management, policy development, workforce development, service development, and practice development. During her CNO tenure, she also contended with an increase in demand for nurses, which led to the recruitment of nearly 1,000 nurses from the Philippines and India. In June 2008, she was presented with the RCN Northern Ireland Outstanding Achievement Award. In 2013, as a panellist at an RCN congress fringe meeting, she discussed personal health budgets, expressing the view that the direct payment system was "just bureaucracy".