Dr Catherine Sharples has joined the Department of Nursing as a full-time resident academic. Dr Sharples qualified as a Staff Nurse in 1986. She later read for a Bachelor’s degree in nursing, at the then newly set up Institute of Health care, University of Malta, graduating in 1992.
She subsequently completed a Master’s degree in Nursing at the University of Malta in 2006. Her dissertation studies focused on the ‘Role of the school nurse in state primary schools’. In 2010, Dr Sharples embarked on a PhD programme of studies at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral thesis is titled, The history of nursing in Malta (1964-1996): A narrative of delayed professionalisation’.
Throughout her nursing career, Dr Sharples worked in various clinical and educational settings, locally and in the UK. In 1986, as a new staff nurse, she worked in the field of paediatrics, moving on to the Accident and Emergency department. Following a span of months working as a staff nurse at various public and private hospitals in London as a full time agency nurse in 1996, Dr Sharples returned to nursing as a reliever and then spent a short time in the paediatrics setting in Malta and the High Dependency Unit moving back to the Accident and Emergency at St Luke’s Hospital..
Between 2014-2015 she pursued commitments as a lecturer at the MCAST Institute of Applied Sciences. This short period in education saw Dr Sharples return to the clinical field at the Mater Dei Hospital in the Pre-Operative Assessment Clinic. In 2016, she was assigned the role of a Clinical Education Liaison nurse at the Mater Dei Hospital and she remained in this liaison role until she moved fully to the arena of academia last month.
Throughout her professional life Dr Sharples consistently engaged in the clinical mentorship and academic supervision of student nurses.
The Faculty of Health Sciences augurs her well!