A nurse director in the North of England has helped launch a new nursing division at the UK’s leading chamber of clinical expert witnesses.
For the last two months, Dawn Murray, divisional nurse director at Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, has been leading on the creation of a new nursing division at McCollum Consultants.
“I think that my aim, ultimately, is to build a really strong network of nursing experts”
Dawn Murray
The organisation hosts a network of clinical expert witnesses, providing authoritative medico-legal reports to the public and private sectors.
Medico-legal work is the application of medical knowledge to legal proceedings and can involve writing reports, giving evidence in court and attending conferences with lawyers.
Founded in 2017, McCollum Consultants had around 180 specialists in its network as of 2024 but is now expanding including with a new nursing and allied health professional division.
Professor Charles McCollum, founder and chairman of the organisation, told Nursing Times that “it became obvious that nursing expertise was very important” as nurses had been highly sought after in both clinical negligence and personal injury cases.
Despite this, he said there were “a few limited number of agencies for nurses” who want to be expert witnesses.
“We decided that we needed to introduce a nursing division, just as we’re about to open a mental health division, and Dawn kindly agreed to join us to do that,” he added.
Ms Murray has almost 30 years’ experience in nursing working across hospitals in Greater Manchester.
She is currently the divisional nurse director at Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, where she sets the overall direction for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals across the acute adult care division.
Ms Murray also has significant experience in change improvements, having led and implemented various strategic initiatives to enhance patient care, staff engagement and operational efficiency.
Her dedication throughout her career to improving nursing standards and patient care, combined with her deep understanding of medico-legal processes, made her a good candidate to lead the new branch at McCollum Consultants.
Ms Murray told Nursing Times that it was an opportunity she “absolutely could not pass up”.
She added: “I’ve had a wealth of experience and a really generic career at junior and senior level.
“I’ve had experience in lots of report writing, coroner’s cases, all those sorts of things, which I just find really interesting.”
The new division will aim to comprise nurse experts from all specialties and levels of seniority.
Each nurse will be carefully vetted to ensure they are true specialists in their field and will be given specialised medico-legal training as well as ongoing professional development.
Ms Murray said: “I think that my aim, ultimately, is to build a really strong network of nursing experts who can provide opinions on patient safety and quality.
“I think they’ve got a unique position in that they are at the forefront of nursing, and they have that insight into what good looks like and [are] able to offer their opinion based on the facts that are put in front of them.”
Ms Murray, who has been in post at McCollum Consultants since January, noted that she had already recruited some nurses and allied health professionals to join the network, but needed more.
“It’s early days, but we’ve onboarded a significant amount of experts from varied backgrounds,” she said.
Charles McCollum
Meanwhile, Professor McCollum noted that nurses did not have to be “super specialist”, nor did they have to be very senior, to join the network.
He added: “All nurses doing almost anything could be experts if they wanted to get trained and wanted to do this.
“For the solicitor, they want that across the range.”
Nurses interested in joining the network can contact Dawn Murray directly at dn@exp-w.com.
