Aunt passes fob watch to student nurse niece after stellar career
A West Midlands nurse, who has been recognised nationally and internationally for her achievements, is hoping her niece will follow in her footsteps when she joins the profession.
Queen’s Nurse Janine McKnight, 65, is due to retire in October after 46 years having worked at different times as a nurse, a midwife and a health visitor.
“She is a bright button who has always dreamt of becoming a nurse and I have nurtured her”
Janine McKnight
However, she said she was delighted to see her niece Tegan Wood, 18, take her first steps in nursing and has handed on a fob watch that she had been given by her parents 46 years ago.
Ms McKnight said: “My mum and dad gave me this fob watch in 1978 and I’m proud to pass it on to Tegan. She is a bright button who has always dreamt of becoming a nurse and I have nurtured her.”
Ms McKnight trained as an enrolled nurse at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital from 1978 to 1980, before going on to become a registered nurse in 1994.
The following year she left to retrain as a midwife in Birmingham and, after another five years, she changed direction again and retrained as a health visitor in 2001.
She semi-retired in 2019 but returned during the Covid-19 pandemic as a personalised care manager at Derbyshire Integrated Care Board and then became a freelance caesarean section recovery coach.
Recognised internationally, she was invited to speak on premature baby care and breastfeeding in 2009, visiting Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia to deliver teaching to over 1,000 nurses and carers.
Ms McKnight became a Queen’s Nurse in 2010 for her work through the Royal College of Nursing on shaken baby syndrome programme, a subject that she was invited to speak on in Atlanta in the US.
She is also credited with developing the ‘five guide’, which encourages maternity clinicians to use their hand as a communication tool to enhance recovery and safeguard women from infection after a caesarean section.
In 2019, Ms McKnight was awarded a British Empire Medal, by Her Majesty the Queen, for ‘services to nursing’.
Following that, during 2021-22, she worked further on a caesarean pathway with midwives in Brisbane, Australia, exploring caesarean wound care and recovery following c-section.
This led her to co-author a book called the C-Section Recovery Manual: Your Body, Your Recovery.
Meanwhile, Ms Wood has just completed a BTEC in Triple Health and Social Care and has been awarded funding to support her with a mental health nursing degree at Birmingham University.
She said: “I’m really looking forward to be continuing the family legacy into nursing, and the avenues it might take me to.”
