Ian Stewart McDonald
Executive Director of Nursing- HH
Ian McDonald is the Executive Nurse at Heart Hospital. The focus of nursing development there is the wider integration of clinical nurse specialists notably in electrophysiology and heart failure. Nurses have actively been engaged in reducing the pathway for door-to-balloon time for PPCI cases and have played a major role in the hospitals’ Value Improvement Teams which won the Managing Director’s Award for Value Improvement at the Point of Care.
He has over 30 years healthcare experience as a nurse and paramedic which has been gained in both military and civilian organizations.
He began his career as a combat medical technician in the British Army, where he was trained to provide life-saving resuscitation and immediate first aid on the battlefield.
He later moved into General Adult Nursing and as a Staff Nurse. Ian took part in his country's first Nurse-Anesthetist training trials before this career pathway was formally established in the UK. He specialized in Coronary Care Nursing at West Middlesex University Hospital.
Ian has since worked in secondary and tertiary hospitals in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In addition, he has held operational, managerial and director positions in primary care, education and training, staff development and strategic planning.
One of Ian's greatest challenges was leading a multi-disciplinary healthcare team on a United Nations Humanitarian Peacekeeping Mission in the former Yugoslavia where his team provided a combined primary care and emergency care function to UN personnel and local nationals in areas of mass destruction and with limited resources during winter temperatures of minus -20*C in Eastern Croatia.
He again worked in the region several years later as the Nursing Director of a Field Hospital in Bosnia & Herzegovina which provided helicopter delivered Fast Response Medical Teams to emergency situations in the mountainous region of Sipovo.
Ian obtained a MSc from London University's London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and London School of Economics and is a past Fellow of the Institute for Leadership and Management in the UK.
He was made a Member of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by his Queen her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second for Gallantry in the line of duty as an operational Nursing officer at a major terrorist explosion in Northern Ireland during which he administered lifesaving first aid to victims of the bomb blast and coordinated casualty evacuation by air and by road from the scene.
