Jo Sheppard

I qualified as an RGN at St Mary’s hospital in London in 1992. I spent 3 years working in a variety of acute settings before studying a BSc in Nutrition at the University of Surrey. I combined my passion for nutrition and nursing by becoming a nurse specialist in parenteral nutrition at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in 1998.

I later spent time working as a junior sister on the intestinal failure unit at St Marks hospital in London, before returning to the John Radcliffe as a nurse specialist in anorectal and oesophageal physiology.

I relocated back to my childhood home in Cornwall in 2005. After initially working in the endoscopy unit at RCHT, I became Cornwall’s first Inflammatory Bowel Disease Nurse in 2008. I have been able to combine my previous experiences within nutrition and gastroenterology to provide individualised, patient focused care to patients with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis.

Together with my colleague, Caroline Collins, I run a telephone helpline for patients with IBD as well as seeing patients face to face in clinic and reviewing patients by telephone. As well as undertaking an MSc qualification in clinical examination, I am also a non medical prescriber.