Patience Chinwadzimba, RN BSc, 

Nurse Executive 

Patience joined Cerner Ltd in September 2005 as a consultant. In this role, Patience also undertook and still is, the SME for Emergency Department work. She then moved into the solution architect role and subsequently, the role of an integration architect.

In 2010, Patience had an opportunity to move into a clinical strategist position and put her clinical experience into good use within the role. It was here that Patience had the opportunity to work with clients in defining and measuring benefits, helping them define future state, workflow optimisation and also educating Cerner associates on the nuances of clinical practice and application of information technology. In 2011, Patience became a healthcare executive. In this position, the responsibility has expanded to developing and maintaining nursing and clinical executive relationships as well as strategic planning of future technology developments for Cerner’s clients in the UK. One of Patience’s other roles is that of an NHS-accredited clinical safety officer. In this role, she works with the Cerner UK Clinical Safety Committee to make sure that deployed clinical solutions are safe and will not introduce harm to patients.

Patience also guides and assists Cerner UK clients in preparing for their HIMSS Stage 6/7 accreditations and has helped 3 of Cerner’s clients attain their accreditation. Patience has a passion for mentoring nurse leaders in IT and believes nurses should be sitting at the table and enact change, rather than have it enacted on them. To this end, she mentors and supports CNIOs in the UK and Australia through the use of a distribution list, site visits as well as yearly in-person forums. This group shares challenges, knowledge, practice and innovation. Patience also runs the quarterly nursing and allied health professional special interest group which has over and above 30 attendees at each one. Patience is a member of the Shuri Network, where, as an ally, she is participating in the Digital Shadowing program.

Prior to joining Cerner, Patience worked as a project manager for an Australian company implementing an ED and theatre systems. In this role, she successfully project managed 9 projects and delivered on-time the implementation of an A&E system at one of the UK’s largest A&E departments, Queens Medical Centre Nottingham, as an early adopter of the National Program for IT, as well as NHS Grampian in Scotland as part of the Scottish National Program for IT. Patience also worked for LogicaCMG as a clinical consultant during the NPfIT program, and also worked for Siemens Healthcare for two years as a business analyst working client-side on a Cerner Millennium project that implemented clinical documentation.

Patience has over 23 years of direct patient care experience. Her background is in ED nursing and even though she left full-time nursing in 2002, Patience is still a practicing nurse and works at her local hospital as an agency nurse in the ED. This allows her to keep up to date with any changes in clinical practice.

Patience attained her Diploma in Higher Education Nursing (DipHE Nursing) from Middlesex University in 1995 and subsequently received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Critical Care (BSc) from the University of Hertfordshire. She is currently undertaking an MSc in Health Informatics and is a member of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.