Julia Holding

Julia Holding

Julia Holding (RGN, BSc Hons – Public Health, MSc)

I worked for the NHS for nearly 40 years and have had over 14 different jobs and worked for 11 different organisations.

I started my career in nursing, but also trained and worked as a Midwife and a Health Visitor, before taking on management roles at NHS Trusts, Regional Health Authorities, and with National NHS Organisations, for the last 7 years.

My last role, which finished in April 2020 was as the National Lead for Patient Experience with NHS England and NHS Improvement, where I worked with over 230 healthcare providers to help them to improve the experience of their patients.

While in this role I developed national learning networks, developed and published tools to improve experience of care, which are used right across England, and have regularly spoken at national and international conferences.

The reason I am so interested in the speakers for schools’ programme is because I feel the story of my personal and professional journey could be inspiring to others.

I had a pretty awful time at school, I am dyslexic, but I went to school in the 1960’s and 70’s before this was known about. I was written off academically early on and to add to the pain I was bullied really badly.

At 16 I had two O-Levels, and one of them was cookery, and after some hard work and support from teachers I managed at 18 to get another three O-Levels and a two (barely) passes at A-Level.

This was just enough to enable me to get into Nursing. This is where my journey began.

Although I finished in April, I went straight back to clinical practice as a Nurse Volunteer to help my local trust.