Managing the clinical challenges of spinal cord injury
Virtual education conference 2025

Speaker Profiles

Speakers subject to change.

Chris Paton

Chris Paton

Chris Paton is a registered nurse and has trained and worked at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust for the past 13 years.

Chris has a background in Plastics, Burns and Spinal Injury. He currently works as a Tissue Viability Clinical Nurse Specialist.

In 2022 Chris was part of a successful attempt to support a spinally injured individual to climb Kilimanjaro.

Chris' goal is to support hospitals, community staff and those with spinal injuries to understand how to prevent pressure injuries.

Lewis Petty

Lewis is the Policy and Health Influencing Manager at SIA.

He is keen to use his role to influence the creation and adoption of national policy, ensuring that the voice and needs of people with spinal cord injuries are heard.

Lewis worked as a mental health nurse in the NHS for 10 years. His clinical career was spent working in high acuity psychiatric intensive care units and crisis teams. He then went on to work as the ICB wide service manager for the Northeast and North Cumbria’s veterans (OpCourage) mental health service. In 2018, Lewis completed a postgraduate diploma in psychological approaches for complex mental health issues.

Lewis Petty
Susie Wood

Susie Wood

Susie joined SIA in 2022 as the clinical specialist for the north east region.

She has over 20 years of experience in spinal cord injury rehabilitation and has an interest in burns and plastics, and pain management.

She has a passion for rehabilitation and enjoys working with patients to achieve goals which are meaningful for them.

In 2013, Susie completed a Masters degree in advancing practice to develop her knowledge of research.

Frances Moya

Fran qualified as a physiotherapist in 2003 and joined SIA in 2024 as part of the Travel with Confidence project.

She previously worked as an Advanced Physiotherapist at the National Spinal Injuries Centre (NSIC) for 15 years and has extensive experience of physiotherapy for clients with spinal cord injury.

For a number of these years Fran worked in the dedicated Young Person's Unit at the NSIC and is experienced with paediatric onset spinal cord injury.

Her career also includes several years in private practice in the community.

Frances Moya
Mark Jarratt

Mark Jarratt

Mark joined SIA in 2022 as the SCI nurse specialist for the southeast and London areas.

He has 30 years of experience working at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville. At the NSIC Mark worked in various roles including as the practice development and respiratory nurse for the unit.

He was also involved with aviation medicine and eventually brought back over 1000 patients from abroad.

Karen Biggs

Karen is a SCI Specialist Nurse at SIA.

She provides specialist advice and support to patients, families and Healthcare Professionals across the Midlands, South and East Yorkshire and Mid-Wales. As part of her role, Karen delivers a range of accredited training and education through the Frank Williams Academy for HCPs, working in hospital settings, primary healthcare organisations and individual care teams.

She graduated as a Registered General Nurse in 1990, going on to obtain her BSc (hons) in Advanced Professional Practice in 2003.

Karen has 25 years of experience working in Neurological Rehabilitation Units and for 20 of those years worked in a Senior Sister role, leading clinically and developing specialist inpatient rehab for those with neurological condition.

Karen Biggs
Andy Wharton

Andy Wharton

Andy is SIA's Support Network Manager and oversees his team of support coordinators, across the country, who provide specialist support and advice for life after injury.

Andy sustained a T12 spinal cord injury following a fall and has lived with paraplegia and as a wheelchair user since 2000.

He joined SIA in 2013 working in the North East as a part of the peer support service that has now evolved into the SIA Support Network.

Kerryn Pratt

Kerryn is the Head of the Frank Williams Academy and has worked in health information, education and service delivery for over 20 years, with people-centred causes always close to her heart.

Beginning her career within the ambulance service, Kerryn is familiar with the broad array of services and settings where healthcare occurs. She then went onto join St John Ambulance as Head of Education and Quality. Kerryn delivered their covid vaccine programme, whereby she guided the recruitment and mobilisation of 30,000 volunteers in 7 months to NHS quality standards.

During 2022 she worked at Prostate Cancer UK to manage and implement their improvement programmes for over 150 clinicians. In that time, she secured funding to make the programme self-sustaining, which ultimately led to the improved care for more than 40,000 men across the UK.

She joined SIA in 2023. In her role she is eager to continue improving the knowledge surrounding spinal cord injury, for all healthcare professionals across the different settings and disciplines of treatment and care.

Kerryn Pratt

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