Ann Penelope Young

Ann Penelope Young (1946-2011)

Ann Penelope Child was born on February 9th 1946 at Sutton in South West London. She was known throughout her illustrious adult career as Ann P Young, becoming known as a person who mastered difficult tasks with great aplomb in the fields that she choose whilst keeping a persona which resonated a modesty which made light of those achievements.

In both her nursing and academic careers, through quiet determination, huge amounts of application and not a little talent for imaginative innovation and creativity, her work, whether hitting the keys of a typewriter in 1980 for her first book or the keyboard of a computer in 2005 for her PhD thesis, was informed throughout by her ability to combine widely-read theoretical knowledge with practical experience.

Naomi Pattisson who was in Ann's Science 6th Form group at Sutton High is one person who knew Ann from her youthful days and wrote in correspondence in 2011 "we are all meeting together this year to celebrate our 65th birthdays (48 years since we left school!) next month and will spend time remembering Ann;...she certainly set the standard for hard work and high marks, being quiet, gentle and somewhat shy."

Jennifer Kretz who was with Ann at Kings College Hospital said of her: "I remember her as the slim, smiley student nurse (in the days when nurses looked like nurses - funny hats and all!) with a very gentle demeanour which hid quite a steely and determined person."

She was never one to blow her own trumpet; nor did she have to. She was never one to seek status and income for any egotistical careerist ends but always had the interests of those she sought to motivate first and foremost in her mind. It was that instinct to help where she saw a problem which led her to be the first to write a working manual full of practical examples for nurses who wanted a basis understanding of how the law can and does affect them in their carrying out of their everyday duties.

Ann obviously saw a gap that needed to be filled in nurses' legal training education whilst she was Sister Tutor at Guy's Hospital Nurse Training School, where she had worked since 1976 and wrote her ground-breaking book, "Legal Problems in Nursing Practice", which was first published in 1981, becoming a bestseller and the standard text on the subject throughout the 1980s. Other just as relevant and well-regarded books exploring the same subject but from different angles followed in the next two decades.

What distinguished Ann's work was her ability to focus on how the law affects nursing practice, and an allied subject which she promoted of ethical practice, in clear concise prose using practical examples that she used which any reasonably intelligent nurse could readily relate to.

Ann changed career tracks into Health Management in the 1990s, as the ever escalating and never-ending reorganisation of hospitals changed the face of nursing education. At this time it moved away from ward and hospital based training and was taken over by the educational sector. Nursing qualifications changed significantly from the previous pattern of 3-year SRN's and 2-year SEN's to nurses on outside academic courses, with nursing educational qualifications becoming no longer based on completing in-hospital ward assignments.

She qualified with an MBA in 1994 and in October of that year went on to have a distinguished and respected academic career at the University of East London, first as a Senior Lecturer in Strategic and International Management at its East London Business School and from 1997 as its Principle Lecturer, until her early retirement through ill health in 2003.

"Ann was known by colleagues at the University of East London and elsewhere in the academic community as someone who was extremely competent, very well organised and decisive; but also as one who invariably saw the funny side of life which always drew people to her.

"We will forever remember her with a smile on her face enjoying a little chuckle about something. We really couldn't have had a better or more respected colleague and were delighted when she earned her PhD, a well deserved academic achievement that impressed not just us but also her examiners. And it was good to see her move on to other impressive achievements outside the University.

"Ann's parting has left us all with a lasting impression of a most gifted and valuable person who we were sad to lose and will not forget; and in this we know we are not alone."

Jim Barry and John Chandler (University of East London, UK)
Roger Johnston (Queen Mary, University of London, UK) and
Elisabeth Berg (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden & Visiting Professor at the University of East London, UK)

Ann’s insatiable intellectual curiosity and need to achieve slowly reasserted itself and, alongside her burgeoning interest in silk art, she also resumed research on her PhD thesis, a project she had began in the late 90’s but which she had put on hold.

As well as the resumption of her PhD thesis completed in 2005 and conferred on her at the UEL degree ceremony in November of that year Ann also resumed a previous relationship with Christ Church Canterbury Business School recommencing in 2004. This tapped into her considerable experience as a course planner and developer and she was also used frequently as an External Assessor.

She and Peter Fairweather, the then Head of the Business School, developed a very productive working relationship of great mutual respect lasting until June 2007 when Peter departed CCCBS to develop his career elsewhere and Ann’s own practical involvement with the school also ceased at that time.

In Peter Fairweather’s assessment of Ann's contribution to Christ Church Canterbury Business School during those years he stated thus:

“When I was trying to expand the postgraduate side of the Business School's work, Anne was a great help to me. I recall a staff seminar she gave which demonstrated in a truly exemplary manner the way in which theory and practice could be integrated to improve the way in which organisations could develop.

"Her teaching style was very clear and mercifully free of the management jargon (to use a polite term!) which was so often designed to replace insight with a shallow mystification.

"As we see with the NHS today, the kind of trenchant analysis which she brought to problems is so often missing.”

Although Ann always greatly impressed her respective colleagues with her sharp mind and cogent analysis of problems and their possible resolution, it is as a talented Silk Artist that she will be best remembered during what proved to be her last years. This final role was itself cut short as she began to be invalided by her illness just at the very time that her artistic imagination had acquired the necessary techniques which had coalesced into one to produce some really brilliant works of art but which was then so tragically lost in such a short time-frame. It will, no doubt, be this last contribution of hers which will attract most visitors to this site.

Throughout her career, in addition to her books Ann contributed papers to numerous conferences, wrote several short articles, and undertook a number of research projects.

Major publications

PhD work: "Unfinished Business: a study of how middle managers with nursing and accountancy backgrounds manage identity in changing UK health care," a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of East London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2005"

Case Studies in Law and Nursing: A Course Book for Project 2000 Training. Nelson Thornes, 1999

Law and Professional Conduct in Nursing. Scutari Press, 1991

Legal Problems in Nursing Practice. Harper & Row, 1981

Managing and Implementing Decisions in Health Care: Six Steps to Effective Management Series, by Ann P. Young BA MBA RGN RNT FRSH, Mary Cooke RN CM RNT BSc(Hons) PGCE MSc(Econs). Bailliere Tindall, 2001

Papers available via this website
These papers were written in her capacity as Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the University of East London Business School.

Real or virtual: what different research strategies are needed for exploring social aspects of the Internet? (Dilemmas 2009. Draft paper)

The reality of virtual society: an exploration of how imaginative behaviour using the resources of the internet can create new or modified identities that have an impact on current social structures. (Dilemmas 2008)

The reality of virtual society: an exploration of how imaginative behaviour using the resources of the internet can create new or modified identities that have an impact on current social structures (Dilemmas 2008. Work in progress)

Obituary

The Nursing Standard