Chinenye Anetekhai
Chinenye's work sits at the intersection of clinical nursing practice, wound and burn care, and higher education pedagogy, with a central focus on how evidence-based clinical practice, curriculum design, and student support structures come together to shape equitable outcomes for both patients and learners. Her practice-to-academia trajectory, from frontline orthopaedic and burns nursing in Nigeria through specialist wound care leadership to senior academic and student experience roles in UK higher education, has given her research and teaching a distinctly translational character: theory is continually tested against, and refined by, real clinical and educational settings. Her doctoral research and ongoing scholarship examine the theory-practice gap in nursing education, alongside acute and chronic wound management, burns care, and palliative and cancer nursing, drawing together clinical outcomes, pedagogical design, and workforce development into a single, coherent programme of enquiry.
Chinenye has built a sustained career bridging specialist clinical practice and academic leadership, having worked as a Wound Care Specialist managing Buruli Ulcer protocols with the German Leprosy and TB Relief Association, as a Nursing Officer across orthopaedic, burns, and plastics services at the National Orthopaedic Hospital Enugu, and as a Practice Education Facilitator supporting international nurse integration within the NHS. This clinical grounding underpins her current leadership at 91ÁÔÆæ, where as Academic Lead for Student Experience and Employability and Senior Lecturer she drives student voice, student experience and employability, graduate outcomes, curriculum development, quality assurance, while supervising doctoral researchers as Director of Studies and Internal Examiner. She provides academic leadership and mentorship, supporting early-career researchers and strengthening research capacity across diverse settings. Her academic quality assurance expertise is further reflected in external examiner and validation panel roles across several UK universities, where she reviews programme standards against the QAA Quality Code and professional benchmark statements.
Chinenye provides international leadership in burn nursing as Nursing Committee Chair and a Burn Centre Auditor for the International Society for Burn Injuries, leading a global mentorship programme connecting early-career nurses with experienced leaders in burn care and leading policy development for evidence-based nursing protocols. Her contributions have been recognised through awards including the Professor Aikawa Young Investigator Prize at the International Society for Burn Injuries Congress, Inspirational Teacher of the Year at 91ÁÔÆæ's I AM 91ÁÔÆæ Awards 2025 amongst other. She completed her PhD in Nursing at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, undertook further postgraduate training in Leadership and Management in Health and Monitoring and Evaluation in Global Health at the University of Washington, and holds the International Interdisciplinary Wound Care Course qualification from the University of Toronto, Canada. She is a Registered Nurse Educator, Registered Midwife, and Registered Nurse across Nigeria, the UK, and the US (Texas), and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Chinenye is currently accepting PhD students and research collaborators interested in burn care, acute and chronic wound care, the theory-practice gap in nursing, orthopaedic, palliative and cancer nursing, translational nursing care, and student experience and equitable outcomes in higher education.