Ward Manager Kim heading out to Paris with ParalympicsGB

Kim Brinkworth, an NHS Ward Manager for Queen Victoria Hospital, in East Grinstead, is heading for her fifth Paralympic Games as part of the Performance medical team supporting the ParalympicsGB athletes and staff, and her third as Lead Nurse for ParalympicsGB, when she heads out to Paris in eight days’ time.

She has seen and shared a lot on the journey from Beijing in 2008 to the French capital in 2024. But her journey didn’t really start in China 16 years ago.

Kim’s connection to world class Paralympic athletes began in Leatherhead several years earlier, in 2003, when she began working at the Defence Medical rehabilitation centre (DMRC) at Headley Court. During her 10 years here, she supported and was a key practitioner in the development of the nursing services required for a rapidly expanding facility.

It was here where she first got involved in sport nursing. She treated military personnel who had been severely injured, many with life-changing injuries. Individuals who had complex physical and psychological injuries and illness as result of their time in service and often at an impressionable time in their lives. It was at Headley Court where she would meet soldiers at their lowest ever ebb, where she would work with them and help them on their pathway from excruciating pain to, in some cases, the Paralympic podium, to gold, silver or bronze.

Kim’s role was focused on rehabilitating these soldiers who had received serious physical and traumatic injury in the line off duty. Kim turned to sport as an activity to inspire her patients, working on their physical and mental health as they found their way through personal trauma.

Kim said: “These were service personnel that got injured in service, and they came back for rehabilitation, and they could be with us for months, even years, some of them. I mean you’re talking double, triple amputees and for a few we had to manage not only the nursing side of care but also the physical and emotional side too. We were having to provide people with activities to keep them engaged in life,’ she said.

“We could get these individuals engaging again, they were exercising, they were motivated, and they were enjoying it. And for me, that brought a spark,’ she recalled.

The spark in Kim led her to volunteering as part of ParalympicsGB Medical support team in Beijing, and again in London in 2012, before becoming Lead Nurse for Rio and then Tokyo, and again later this month in Paris.

“When I first started it was relatively small, compared to what it has become. It’s akin to the Olympics now. There are around 215 athletes in the team, plus around the same again in staff, plus carers and support workers – over 500 in total. In the medical team we’ve have four doctors, three physios, four nurses, three clinical psychologists, a nutritionist. As a team we support the athletes and their individual sports teams in preparation for the games, through local holding/preparation camps and whilst in the Paralympic Village and Competition venues.

“The preparation camp is where the athletes can go to acclimatise before coming into the village. That’s normally open for three weeks and we have a doctor and a nurse in there as well. It’s a big operation!”

Kim has spent the last 20 years working in the NHS, and as a ward manager at QVH she currently oversees over 40 beds in the hospital’s acute plastics and reconstructive surgical ward, specialising in reconstructive care for patients following skin, breast, and head and neck cancer treatment, alongside traumas of the eye, hand and lower limb.

“Without the team of 60 nurses on the Canadian Wing here at QVH, and the support they show me, there is no way I could go away with the ParalympicGB team. The team here is absolutely incredible and I can leave for Paris knowing all our patients are in the very best hands receiving world class care,” Kim said.

She believes it is her managerial experience gained at places like QVH, alongside years of clinical training that had prepared her so well for the games.

“The basic skills of nursing are the same wherever you are, but I find that in a sporting environment there is a lot more autonomy, you haven’t got the same level of clinical support network as you would in a hospital environment,’ she explained.

“I find having the sporting side to my nursing just keeps me enthusiastic, it’s a different pathway that I enjoy doing, being out of the hospital environment and using my nursing skills.

“Being able to support someone in a new environment is really quite rewarding, and it makes me a more interesting nurse. For example some staff don’t necessarily have the more basic skills like catheterisation, especially as they’ve never had to do it,

“It’s daunting for them if they’re in a new environment when they’re faced with having to do a catheter or to manage a catheter, so being able to share the necessary skills and information is a massive thing ahead of the games.”

Looking ahead Kim says this may be her final games in this role but said ‘you can never say never’ and that the pull of the Paralympics could draw her back in four years’ time.

“You’re in an environment that is not replicated anywhere else, you’re in an environment that has literally got hundreds, if not thousands of individuals with a diversity of needs, physically, mentally, and culturally.

“Being immersed in that environment is really something special and gives you a whole new viewpoint on life,’ she said.

For Kim, her favourite memories take her back to Headley Court, where her own journey started, where the spark was lit.

“All the games have been different in different ways; they’ve all been fantastic. I think my best memories are coming across individuals I’ve nursed in the past – individuals who came in to me very close to the point of injury, that had lost limbs or suffered traumatic brain injury.

“Seeing some of these individuals come through the journey they have been on and to see them able to represent their country again, but in a sporting environment and some of them actually medalling is so rewarding and privilege to witness. It’s difficult to put into words.

“I have found that really emotional and rewarding because I felt like I’ve seen this person as their absolute worst and I’ve seen them performing at their best years later on the world stage. I’ve really loved that. People like Nick Beighton who won the bronze in the canoe sprint in Rio, and Dave Henson who won bronze in the 200m sprint in the same games. These are both ex-servicemen and ex-patients of mine. It was extremely emotional seeing them medal.” 

For more information please email the QVH Press Office at qvh.communications@nhs.net