2019 Annual conference

Sally Cheshire CBE

An Authority member since 2006, Sally has personal experience of unsuccessful IVF. She has been our Chair since January 2014 and her appointment is until March 2020. She also chairs Health Education England (North) and is a Board member for Adoption Counts, the regional adoption agency.

Sally worked for nearly 20 years in business, finance and management consultancy before joining the health sector as a senior leader. She is passionate about high quality care and treatment for patients and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's 2017 birthday honours for services to infertility patients and the NHS.

Dr Raj Mathur

Raj is Clinical Lead for Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at Manchester NHS Foundation Trust. He is secretary of the British Fertility Society and an Advisor to HFEA SCAAC. Raj has a research and clinical governance interest in Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome and led on the current RCOG and BFS guidelines for managing OHSS.

Raj spoke at one of the conference workshops as well as this panel discussion. 

Jason Kasraie

Jason is Consultant Embryologist, head of fertility services and HFEA Person Responsible at the Shropshire & Mid-Wales fertility centre. He is the current Chair of the Association of Clinical Embryologists. He has worked in the field for twenty four years and has been afforded a broad perspective through activities including his work as a scientific advisor to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, as a Director of the Association of Clinical Scientists and a member of the professional council of the Association for Healthcare Science. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and was recently awarded a visiting Professorship at University Centre Shrewsbury & The University of Chester.

Jason spoke at one of the conference workshops as well as this panel discussion. 

Natalie Silverman

Natalie will be facilitating the panel discussion at this year's conference. 

Natalie Silverman, Host and Producer, The Fertility Podcast
Natalie Silverman is an established radio broadcaster, having presented on commercial radio for Global for over a decade and she works as a professional voiceover artist. In 2014, Natalie launched The Fertility Podcast once successfully pregnant after NHS funded fertility treatment. The aim of the podcast was to educate and empower people looking to understand more about their fertility.
To date she has released over 180 episodes speaking to fertility experts around the world and sharing stories of men and women talking about their infertility struggles. The Fertility Podcast is the firsts social enterprise podcast and is about to launch a fertility focused show on UKHealthradio.com. Natalie is active within the online TTC community and has just completed her training to become a fertility coach. Natalie has also been working with The Fertility Show in 2019 hosting it's 'Let's Talk Fertility' stage as well as being the 'Podcaster in Residence' for Fertility Fest since its launch. The Fertility podcast is listened to in 90 countries and has had over 300,00 downloads and is available on all major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify and Acast. Natalie is also working with a number of organisations to produce ongoing audio content.
visit the www.thefertilitypodcast.com to find out more or follow on Instagram @fertilitypoddy

Fiona Pringle

Fiona qualified in 1986 and have worked in women’s health most of my career, initially as a staff nurse at The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London before moving to Surrey. 

Fiona spent eight years working in Dermatology before returning to Women’s Health. She joined Oxford Fertility in 1996 as the Nurse Specialist for Fertility managing the NHS fertility clinics and the ovulation induction programme and became the Nurse Manager for the assisted reproduction unit in 1998. She has worked in a number of IVF clinics, including managing satellite services.

Fiona is passionate about developing staff and am committed to providing high quality, evidence based reproductive health services and has been an external advisor for the HFEA and am a founding member of Senior Infertility Nurses Group (SING). She has been involved in writing the on-line training modules for nurses in reproductive medicine and co-authored the RCN Education and Career Progression Framework for Fertility Nurses.

Fiona is currently the Chair of the of RCN Fertility Nursing Forum Steering Committee.  

Angela Pericleous-Smith

Angela is Chair of the British Infertility Counselling Association (BICA) working as a counsellor for over 19 years and specialising in fertility counselling since 2004 when she joined Leeds Fertility alongside her private counselling and supervision practise in York

Angela is a member of British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP) and an Accredited member of BICA.  Currently she is a Trainer with the BICA Training Group providing training to other fertility counsellors to promote high standards of fertility counselling and is Deputy Chair of the BICA Accreditation Board.

Angela has co-authored BICA Guidelines for Good Practice in Fertility Counselling 4th Ed. 2019

Angela’s interests include all aspects of assisted conception, donation treatment, surrogacy and gender dysphoria and supporting patients before, during and after their treatment.

Jane Denton

Jane Denton is Director of the Multiple Births Foundation (MBF), a charity which works with professionals to raise awareness and improve services to meet the specific and special needs of multiple birth families and co- lead for the Elizabeth Bryan Multiple Births Centre..  Her professional background is nursing and midwifery with a specialist interest in infertility and genetics. Jane led the development of the nursing team in one of the first IVF programmes in the UK. As the implications of multiple births arising from infertility treatments began to emerge in the late 1980s she moved to the MBF to address the problems and became Director in 1998. She has written and lectured extensively on all aspects of multiple births and has contributed to substantial change in public and professional attitudes towards them.

A former member and deputy chair of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority and a founder member of the Royal College of Nursing Fertility Nursing Forum Jane has wide experience of the clinical, scientific and ethical challenges presented by the advances in reproductive technologies. She is Sub-editor for Nursing, Counselling and Ethics for the journal “Human Fertility”.  Jane was made a Fellow of the RCN in 2006, an Honorary Fellow of the British Fertility Society in 2008 and was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2007 for services to nursing and healthcare.  She is currently President of the British Fertility Society.

The importance of sharing information on treatment add-ons

Patients deserve evidence-based treatment and we're concerned that patients are not consistently being given unbiased information on the efficacy and safety of treatment add-ons.

This workshop aimed to share examples of good practice around offering add-ons responsibly and reinforcing the importance of providing patients with credible and unbiased information on treatment add-ons so that patients can make informed decisions.

In this workshop the delegates learned:
• examples of how to provide add-ons responsibly and to give unbiased information about add-ons
• how to best share information on efficacy so patients understand it
• about the value of sharing evidence/outcomes for treatment add-ons within the fertility sector.

Providing good patient support is everyone’s responsibility

Providing good patient support is an important part of fertility treatment. That is why our strategy now requires every clinic to develop a patient support policy. This workshop explored how to provide good patient support. Good patient support is the responsibility of everyone at the clinic. This illustrates the ways that clinic staff can work together to provide support throughout treatment and beyond.

In this workshop the delegates learned:
• how the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) are collaborating with other organisations to create new guidance for fertility nurses on how to support patients
• how one clinic and their staff have worked together to develop the patient support policy
• information from a HFEA inspector about how they assess the level of patient support that clinics provide.

What good quality leadership in clinics looks like

Our Code of Practice now includes a new focus on the importance of leadership in the delivery of high-quality care.

Following on from the 2018 leadership events for existing persons responsible (PRs), this workshop was aimed at current and future clinic leaders. It explored all aspects of leadership including the qualities of a good clinic leader and what a good quality clinic looks like.

In this workshop the delegates learned:
• the behaviours and skills that are important to lead a clinic from two experienced PRs
• the actions that the HFEA have undertaken to support leadership and how they can help you as a clinic leader
• what makes a good quality clinic.

Are you getting storage consent right?

The issue of storage consent is central to the treatment process yet it is clear that too many errors are still being made. This workshop was an opportunity to improve the understanding of how storage consent can be extended and to learn how to take storage consent properly. It also provided information about the broader work we are doing on consent.

In this workshop the delegates learned:
• an understanding of the law and the best practice when it comes to storage consent through a scenario-based discussion
• guidance on the consent process, enabling delegates to return to clinics with new ideas for improving practice and avoiding consent errors.

Peter Thompson

Peter became our Chief Executive in April 2012 after three years as Director of Strategy and Information. He is responsible for our overall performance and is focussed on our vision of ensuring high quality care for everyone affected by assisted reproduction.

Peter became an external member of the Council of Queen Mary University of London in November 2017.

Debbie Evans

Debbie is a highly motivated and passionate Nurse who has the responsibility for the day to day clinical management of the Herts & Essex Fertility Centre and 30 members of staff.

Debbie is the current chair of the SING group,– she is extremely proud to hold this position  and to represent her nursing colleagues at stakeholder groups that will shape the future of fertility in the UK.

Debbie Is currently a member of the BFS Executive as the Nurse Representative.

Debbie has been a member of the BFS meetings committee for several years and has developed conference programmes to encourage her nursing colleagues to attend.. She has spoken on several occasions at many meetings and is passionate about sharing her nursing knowledge and good practice.

She worked with Anglia University in developing a Health care assistant programme in line with the Health and Social Care Apprenticeships scheme and successfully trained 2 members of staff to this qualification.

Debbie not only represents nursing interests but has a keen interest in quality Management bringing together her vast knowledge and experience in Quality to ensure she delivers the very best of care in a pro-active and effective way

Debbie is passionate about ensuring patients under her care are supported in a caring and nurturing environment with the most up to date information so they are able to make informed decisions about their care..

Debbie is very active with HFEA matters, and has been actively involved and consulted on the HFEA code of practice and the recent  Consensus statement on Add-On’s.

Francesca Steyn

Francesca is currently the Head of Nursing, Quality and Compliance at the Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health which is a large unit that provides a wide range of specialist fertility treatments and services. She has a special interest in gamete donation and surrogacy, and training and development for nurses and HCA's within the fertility setting.
 
She has worked in various busy London units in both the NHS and private sectors and has had the opportunity to learn and develop a wide range of skills, including performing surgical sperm retrievals under consultant supervision, assisting with the management of the fertility needs of patients diagnosed with a blood borne virus, managing large donation programmes and leading and implementing surrogacy programmes.
 
Francesca is a steering committee member of the Royal College of Nursing, Fertility nursing Forum and has co-authored RCN publications and guidance for fertility nurses. Francesca is also an active member of SING (Senior Infertility Nurses Group), A trustee for The SEED (Sperm, Egg, Embryo and Donation) trust (formally the National Gamete Donation Trust) and has published Department of Health guidance on surrogacy best practice.

Laurél Hird

Laurél is a registered general nurse and registered midwife. 

A successful senior governance professional with extensive experience of developing and implementing robust quality assurance and compliance frameworks to achieve organisational regulatory compliance. Whilst this sounds rather formal, I am pragmatic and a firm believer in working smarter, not harder. I also believe that there is always room to improve, no matter how small a step that might be. I stand by the premise that if you look after your staff (by having robust systems and processes); they will look after your patients. Happy staff = well cared for patients.

Professor Bobbie Farsides

Bobbie is Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, a post she has held since 2006. She joined the Authority on 22 November 2016 and her term continues until 21 November 2019.

Bobbie has more than a decade of experience in researching ethical issues relating to healthcare, especially fertility treatment, antenatal screening, palliative care and issues around death and dying. She is a member of a number of committees and groups and has twice served as a specialist adviser to the House of Lords. Most recently she has chaired a working party for the Nuffield Council on bioethics looking at children’s participation in clinical research

Professor Jonathan Herring

Jonathan is a Professor of Law at the University of Oxford. He became an Authority member on 18 July 2018 and his first term runs until 17 July 2021.

Jonathan teaches medical law and ethics, family law and criminal law. He has written extensively in all of these areas and published over 50 books.  

He is also a qualified solicitor but has not practiced since qualification.

Catherine Callaghan QC

Catherine Callaghan QC is a barrister at Blackstone Chambers. Having first practised as a solicitor in New Zealand and London, she was called to the English bar in 2000 and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 2018. She specialises in public law, professional discipline and all forms of regulatory law, with a particular interest in healthcare regulation. She regularly acts for the HFEA, General Medical Council, Nursing and Midwifery Council, and the Department of Health on a wide range of healthcare issues. Her work for the GMC includes representing the GMC in the public inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, and advising on policy development and professional misconduct in the fertility sector. She has a keen interest in the fertility sector, having advised and acted for the HFEA over a number of years.  Her most high profile case for the HFEA was the 2016 case of Mr and Mrs M v HFEA. Catherine defended the HFEA’s decision to refuse to authorise export to the United States of the couple’s deceased daughter’s frozen gametes to enable Mrs M to receive fertility treatment using the gametes, on the basis that the daughter had not given informed consent to that use of her gametes before she died. Catherine is the only lawyer in a family of doctors and nurses.

Polly Todd

Polly is a qualified nurse, midwife and health visitor and before joining the HFEA, worked in the NHS for over 32yrs, predominantly in midwifery where I stayed for 20 years, 13 of those on the community. As a qualified practice teacher, Polly have enjoyed supporting learners of all disciplines to develop in their roles, both within the NHS and HFEA.

Polly has varied experience in leadership and management at both local and strategic levels, supporting local teams of practitioners and implementing national policy into regional practice.

Polly is committed to quality improvement, practice development and supporting change in order to provide the best possible care to patients and service users, some of the reasons why she joined the HFEA as a clinical inspector, where she has been since 2015.

Polly is now one of four senior inspectors supporting the inspectorate team and senior management within the organisation. She very much enjoys being able to influence change and support quality improvement within the sector so that patients, donors and donor conceived individuals can access the best possible care and service.

Karen Conyers

Karen joined the HFEA as a scientific inspector in 2014 following a 21-year career as an embryologist. In the early 1990s, IVF was an emerging science, with new technologies, advances and treatments developing in quick succession. Over the years she has worked in clinics across the UK, USA and Australia. Prior to working as an embryologist, Karen completed a Ph.D. in reproductive science, and in the mid-1990s she also undertook a post-doctoral research fellowship studying the science of freezing ovarian tissue. Working in IVF clinics across the world has been fascinating and provided her with wide-ranging exposure to many different scientific and technical processes, and an insight into how national legal and social schemes impact this unique area of medicine. Karen served on the training sub-committee of the UK’s professional body for embryologists (Association of Clinical Embryologists) for over six years, as secretary, training assessor and examiner, a role she relished for the opportunity to train, and learn from, the next generation of reproductive medicine scientists. 

Rachel Cutting

Rachel is the person responsible and Principle Embryologist of Jessop Fertility at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She became an Authority member on 18 July 2018 and her first term runs until 17 July 2021.

Rachel has over 20 years’ experience in embryology and is a former chair of the Association of Clinical Embryologists. She helped to develop the training framework for the Reproductive Science Scientific Training Programme and has written national guidelines for oocyte freezing and elective single embryos transfer.

Rachel presents regularly at international conferences and workshops and has published papers and book chapters. She was awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to infertility.

Joanne Anton

Joanne Anton is a highly experienced policy professional with over 10 years’ experience at the HFEA.  Joanne has led on a variety of policy areas related to assisted reproduction and embryo research. Joanne’s specialist policy areas are gamete and embryo donation, consent and legal parenthood, surrogacy and mitochondria donation - all of which have substantial regulatory, legal, scientific and ethical dimensions. More recently Joanne has been heading the HFEA’s leadership initiatives, developing a PR key behaviours and role description, re-designing the HFEA Person Responsible entry test and overseeing the up and coming PR leadership events. She is a politics graduate from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has a post graduate qualification in Government, Policy and Politics.

Tony Rutherford

Tony is a Consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Gynaecological Surgery at Leeds Fertility. An Authority member since 11 November 2014, his term runs until 11 November 2020.

Tony was one of the first to introduce vaginal ultrasounds and gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRH) drugs into routine practice and has been instrumental in developing the pathways that all UK doctors use to treat fertility patients. He has published more than 90 publications and lectures across the globe.

A former Chair of the British Fertility Society, he was also a founder member of the British Society of Gynaecological Endoscopy and is a member of numerous influential committees within the sector.

Professor Gudrun Moore

Gudrun Moore is Professor of Clinical and Molecular Genetics at UCL’s Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She joined as an Authority member on 18 July 2018 and her term runs until 17 July 2021.

Gudrun's research includes the molecular genetics of major complications of pregnancy, foetal growth restriction, prematurity, pre-eclampsia, and recurrent miscarriage.

From 2009-2014, in collaboration with Professor Lesley Regan, she established the 'Baby Bio Bank', facilitating research into the main complications of pregnancy. She has an international reputation for her work in both paediatric and obstetric specialities, recognised by awards to an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a fellowship of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Mr Yacoub Khalaf

Yacoub is the Medical Director of the Assisted Conception Unit (ACU) at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and Director of their pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) programme. He became an Authority member on 1 April 2015 after working with us for a number of years on committees and initiatives, and his term continues 31 March 2021.

As well as being an Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and leading a research programme, he serves on numerous important boards and groups in the field of reproductive medicine. Having published more than 100 journal papers and book chapters and lectured across the globe, his expertise is called upon regularly by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence(NICE) and the media.

Dr. Ippokratis Sarris

Ippokratis is a Consultant in Reproductive Medicine at King’s Fertility and an Honorary Consultant at King’s College Hospital. He is also the HFEA Person Responsible for the unit. As such, he oversees the centre’s clinical, research, educational and regulatory activities.

Ippokratis has written several peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and textbooks. He mentors trainee doctors through the King’s Fertility research  fellowship programme, and takes a particular interest in the overall development of all allied disciplines, from nurses and embryologists to administrators alike. He is keen to help forge and empower the professionals of the future who will be looking after patients for years to come. An active member of numerous medical organisations, he currently sits on the British Fertility Society’s Training Subcommittee, having previously been on the Executive Committee.

Ippokratis has an interest in regulation and the role it plays in maintaining standards of care set by the governing legal framework. He is also passionate about personalised medicine to meet the unique and specific needs of patients, with the premise of how one can offer high quality, safe and affordable care, alongside a satisfying patient experience.

Sharon Fensome-Rimmer

As a state registered scientist and a Chartered Quality Professional Sharon has worked within science & quality since 1988. Sharon started her career within quality control, trained as a Scientist within the NHS gained a master’s degree in Biomedical Science, becoming a fellow of the institute of Biomedical Science and achieving Chartered Scientist Status. She has undertaken further training in the field of Quality and has also achieved the status of Fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute. As both a Health and Care Professions Council Registered Scientist and Chartered Quality Professional Sharon has a unique insight into the Health Care Sector having worked in laboratories & governance.

Sharon is the Chief Inspector of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Janet Kirkland MacHattie

Janet Kirkland MacHattie is a clinical inspector at the HFEA.

Janet is a registered nurse having trained in Scotland. Janet started her journey in the field of fertility at Bourn Hall Clinic in 1982 under the guidance and support of the pioneers, Patrick Steptoe ,Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy. Starting as a very junior nurse in a developing field  Janet went on to become team leader, head of nursing and then Nurse Education Officer working with Kay Elder to develop and deliver fertility nurse training to nurses from home and abroad.  

After being at Bourn Hall for approximately 25 years Janet joined the HFEA as an external clinical  inspector moving on to work with the HFEA as a full time clinical inspector in 2006.

Janet is part of the patient support working group at the HFEA and is committed to helping clinics improve the emotional support they offer patients, their partners and donors.