Training and education

Medical training at the Royal Free Hospital, London - 2001
MRCS (member of the Royal College of Surgeons) - 2006
MRCEM (member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine) - 2008
DCH (diploma in child health) - Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health - 2011
FRCEM (fellow of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine) - 2013

Experience

Miss Donnelly is a consultant in emergency medicine who, having been associated with the Trust since 2003, was appointed as a consultant in 2014. She specialises in emergency care for children.

Miss Donnelly sees patients in both the adults' and children's emergency departments. Her work includes night shifts and being on call for major trauma calls in the emergency department. This includes clinical administration shifts, which ensure safe follow-up of abnormal reports, results and x-rays.

Miss Donnelly takes an active role in teaching, educational supervision and recruitment, from medical school through to consultants. She leads a subgroup within the emergency department children’s safeguarding team which helps manage complex cases who need a special plan for their care in the emergency department; the Children’s Emergency Department High Intensity service user group – CED HISUG. This involves working closely with multidisciplinary teams, local in-patient units, and different agencies across the region; educating and innovating to provide the best possible care to these patients. Within the adult side of the emergency department, Miss Donnelly is the lead for the Clinical Decision Unit (CDU). She attends departmental, local, regional, national and interagency meetings. To keep up to date with professional and clinical practice within modern emergency medicine, research and other clinical specialties, she also engages in e-learning, attends courses and training days, experience days and conferences.

Miss Donnelly is an examiner for the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), and an instructor for Advanced Paediatric Life Support courses.

Awards and prizes

Local Clinical Excellence Award (CEA) 2017

Key achievements

Previously as lead for safeguarding children in the emergency department, Miss Donnelly developed new paperwork, processes and educational programmes. She also established a culture change in the department with regard to identification and sharing information in safeguarding.
As CED HISUG lead Miss Donnelly has set up the group, developing high quality care plans which have been lauded and shared across different agencies, ensuring best care for complex patients. She has initiated close links with local in-patient psychological medicine units and started an educational programme with them to promote optimal care in challenging circumstances.
As CDU medical co-lead Miss Donnelly worked closely with nursing and specialist colleagues to design and oversee completion of a new Clinical Decision Unit for the emergency department. It opened in 2021 – a light, colourful, welcoming environment in which to recuperate and also work. Miss Donnelly and the team ensured a dementia and mental health friendly focus, allowing the CDU to specialise in observational medicine for patients who require care for up to 12 hours before leaving the Emergency Department. In CDU you will find the highly specialist multidisciplinary practitioners of Urgent Response Services in ED, psychiatry liaison, and the vulnerable adult support team. Working together with the ED team, diagnoses are clarified, and safe discharges are coordinated across a wide range of presentations in patients who may therefore not require admission into ward-based specialties of UHS.

Contact

You can contact Miss Donnelly via the emergency department by calling 023 8120 6220 or 023 8120 2178.