Professor Mark Radford is currently National Director of Long Term Workforce Plan for Delivery, Director of Education and Training and Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for England and was formerly the Chief Nurse of Health Education England. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mark led the national NHS vaccine workforce program ensuring the success in phase 1 delivery of 15m vaccinations. The program recruited and trained over 250k people including 90k clinicians and 70k volunteers in a few months to launch one of the world’s fastest programs. He also led the deployment of Student nurses in the pandemic response waves 1 and 2, with 71 Universities in England.

As Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for England, Mark supports the Chief Nursing Officer in ensuring the NHS workforce is fit for the future. This includes recruitment and retention, skills development, maintaining the quality of management and leadership, tackling inequality and breaking down barriers, ensuring places of work are rewarding, positive and filled with opportunity, and enabling more volunteers to support front-line staff.

Throughout his clinical career, Mark has maintained his academic interests. He has been involved in multiple research projects looking at the roles of nursing in advanced practice, gender disparity and pay, as well as big data analysis of nursing and retention, among others. He has also published five books on emergency and perioperative surgery throughout his career. He is also a Professor of Nursing at Birmingham City University and Coventry University, with research covering emergency care models, advanced practice, staffing, risk modelling, clinical decision-making, expertise and sociological issues in healthcare.

Mark was honoured with a CBE in The Queen’s New Year Honours 2022 list.