Suad Abdullahi is a registered nurse from Somaliland and has been in healthcare industry over 20 years. She was born, studied and worked in United Arab Emirates. Nursing was not her passion when she was growing up as a child, rather she wanted to study English literatures. She still remembers her father telling her about studying nursing so that she can upscale her English language as well gain nursing profession. At that time, she did not understand what her father meant, until a few years later when she went to hospital with her mum and met a Somali nurse, who usually supports all Somali women in hospital. After that day she knew what her father wanted in future.
Suad gained her Bachelor degree in Nursing and started as RN; she joined the Maternity and Child health department and she has been selected to join the antenatal unit team as joiner nurse, team leader, and then specialised as Lactation consultant. She worked in different wards to support any mother that needed support with infant feeding. For example, she worked at postnatal unit, paediatric unit, NICU, SBCU, and run independently lactation clinic where she gave group or individual breastfeeding education to parents and also, follow up for postnatal women. Furthermore, she developed policies and educational leaflets. One of her biggest accomplishments was being part of leading members to achieve a baby friending accreditation by the WHO & Unicef early 2018. In addition, she has progressed to be an educator and delivers educational training across the hospital; moreover part of her work was auditing to sustain standards of baby friendly Initiatives.
In August 2021, she moved to the United Kingdom. Moving to the UK was a bit emotional and challenging for her. Leaving family, friends and her comfort zone was not a happy moment. She knew that whatever happens in UK, there was no way to go back, it’s only one way moving forwards and upwards. Firstly, she joined a local hospital in Birmingham in the Gynaecology unit for about 6 months and then she moved to maternity department after she successfully passes her interview as a Neonatal Infant feeding lead. The Infant feeding team at the city hospital welcomed her and supported her with all training. She joined Keele University and did her neonatal foundation course level 7. She has also attended the UK UBICEF baby friendly initiatives training course, neonatal audit training online and embedding baby friendly standards in neonatal care online. Currently she delivers neonatal baby friendly training to nursing and medical staff and is involved in updating polices.
Her passion is to study her master’s degree in a quality and specialised Neonatal Unit. In her free time she loves cooking and spending time catching up with family.
