Karen Ritchie

Karen qualified as a Registered General Nurse in 1994, going on to qualify as a Registered Mental Health nurse in 1997. Throughout her career Karen has been passionate about working with older people experiencing mental ill health. She completed an Msc in dementia studies in 2010 at Stirling University, and at that time she was working as a community dementia nurse focusing on early intervention work and people with early onset dementia.

Karen was lucky enough to one of the first cohorts of the NES Dementia Improvement Specialist Leadership (DISL) course and is one of the 6 DISLs in NHS Lothian. Current she is Senior Charge Nurse in the Edinburgh Rapid Response Team which is a hospital based community team working with older people in mental health crisis to help prevent admission to hospital. She’s a great believer in the quote ‘Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge’ Simon Sinek 2016.