Ruth trained at the Royal Free Hospital, London, working in Neurology in her first year as a student nurse in 1988 and has never looked back! Ruth is passionate about improving the care of people with a long-term neurological condition and has worked as a specialist nurse since 1998 in Multiple Sclerosis, Motor Neurone disease, Parkinson‘s and Movement Disorders (MD). Ruth has seen the emphasis of managing patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) change from very basic reactive symptom management to pro-active disease modifying therapies and disease modifying lifestyle, giving patients hope.

During her career Ruth has helped set up a multi-disciplinary clinic for patients with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in Australia; she set up the Neurology specialist nurse services at Kingston hospital as the lead neurology nurse; she also set up the MS nursing service in Richmond and Movement Disorder(MD) nursing service at Charing Cross Hospital.

Ruth has more recently worked within 2 community neuro rehabilitation services as an MS specialist nurse liasing with many specialist centres to enable patients to be cared for closer to home in line with the NHS Transformation plan.

Ruth won the Neurology Academy Intermediate MasterClass project in 2019 and Advanced MasterClass project in 2022 with a joint venture mapping pathways for people with MS across Surrey also completed the MS Leaders Academy inaugural course and was part of the lead team who presented their work MS unite at Raising the Bar: July 2019–July 2022 – reflecting… | Neurology Academy; her home urine test kit developed during lockdown has now been launched, published nationally and shortlisted for the QuDoS awards 2023; Ruth was invited by the MS Trust to sit on the MS decisions editorial panel in 2015 (Open Door p13) ; she has worked with NHS Right Care to develop NHS RightCare » Progressive Neurological Conditions Toolkit; and was lead author on 2 documents published nationally in MD management.

In 2022/2023 Ruth was part of a consensus group who published the ‘Management of Bladder dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis’ document and Bladder Management Pathway and more recently has published in the BJNN (A simple and successful solution to issues relating to urinary tract infections in people with MS) and MS care: integrating advanced therapies and holistic management

Ruth has spoken at national and international Multiple Sclerosis conferences; is lead faculty for MS, Uro-neurology and Palliative Care Academy and is a committee member on the RCN neurosciences forum.

At home Ruth enjoys painting (on canvas!), open water swimming and time with her family.

Ruth remains dedicated to improving care for people diagnosed with a long-term neurological condition in her role as head of nursing with Neurology Academy and continues to work as a neurology specialist nurse which both enable her to influence the care and management of people with a long term neurological condition.