Sharon Fernandez

Sharon has worked at the Hurley since April 2016 as the Director of Unscheduled Care (Urgent Treatment Centres (UTC’s), GP Out of Hours)

As a registered nurse of 42 years, she also has a strategic overview of nursing within the Hurley Group.

Her previous leadership and nursing positions include: Transplant Co-ordinator at King’s College Hospital, Director of Nursing NHS Direct, Lead Nurse Community Service, Lewisham PCT, and Deputy Head of Primary Care at NHS England.

During Sharon's time in Unscheduled Care, the team delivered the Integrated Unscheduled Care Strategy. Other successes in Unscheduled Care include the implementation of a digital front-end (eTriage). This is fully compliant with the National Strategy for Urgent Treatment Centres. To achieve this, systems, processes and policies have been embedded in order for the system to identify and prioritise the most unwell patients as soon after their arrival as possible.

Sharon is also the Director of the Primary Care Gambling Service (PCGS) which was set up in 2019.

The PCGS two main aims were to: 

• Establish a GP-led service with a multidisciplinary approach and to provide a treatment service for those suffering from gambling harm.
• To educate and improve the responsiveness of the Primary Care Workforce.

The PCGS sits between the existing voluntary care organisations and is part of the National Gambling Support Network. The success of the service has taken the PCGS team from a local service, to a national service seeing between 800–1000 patients a year.

Sharon has a strong commitment to Clinical Governance and is an active member of the Hurley Clinical Governance Group. In her role as Director of the PCGS she sits on a number of strategic boards across the country.

Outside work, Sharon enjoys international travel, cooking, cinema and walking.