St Luke's Hospital is a registered charity that was founded by Mary McMaster in the 1950's. She had a vision for a facility that should support a patient from hospital to home, supporting their full recovery, enabling confidence to help each person to live as independently as possible.  This vision remains our goal today.

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The direction and development of St Luke's is lead by a volunteer trustee board of professionals from a wide variety of healthcare and business backgrounds.  The management team is lead by Chief Executive Richard Burden.  Our nursing team at St Luke’s is led by Matron, Vendula Waine, who works closely with our team of registered nurses and healthcare assistants.  Training is very important to the development of each staff member to ensure that we are always striving to improve how we support our patients.  We have a dedicated training facility for this purpose, to ensure all our staff are the best trained and up to date with the latest developments in health care. 

 

Our staff team guarantee that every person feels valued and is treated sensitively.

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Nursing and Management Teams

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Richard Burden - Chief Executive

Since 1985 Richard has worked in the social care sector as a Registered Manager and then Nominated Individual his own private care home. Richard has been Chairman of the Oxford Care Association, Chairman of the Oxfordshire Social Care Network and Chief Executive of the Forum of Oxfordshire Social Care Employers. Richard has also been a Project Manager for the South-East Care Advice Service and have been involved in many regional and national associations and boards, such as for Skills for Care. Richard was approached to take over as CE of St Luke’s in 2013.  Since joining the charity, Richard has dedicated his time to develop the Hospital to become a leading healthcare facility in the South East.

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Vendula Waine - Matron

Vendula qualified as a Registered Nurse in 2005.  Since that time, she has developed a broad range of skills and experience across different healthcare settings including working in a range of care homes and hospital units.   Vendula joined St Luke's Hospital as Deputy Matron in 2014 and was promoted to the position of Matron in 2017.  Throughout her nursing career, she has continued her professional development; Vendula was awarded a Diploma in Leadership for Health & Social Care in 2017.

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Abrahaley Mebrahtu  - Finance Manager & Company Secretary

Abrahaley is a Chartered and Certified Accountant with MBA specialising in Finance. His education and knowledge, together with over thirty years experience in senior financial management has helped him to achieve higher goals. He has served as a senior auditor, chief accountant and finance manager. He installed accounting systems and designed management guidelines in line with the strategic plans for organisations. He is also a chairperson for one charity and an advisor for two other charities. Abrahaley has experience in managing organisational change, assessing effectiveness and efficiency of systems. He is committed to the ethos of St Luke’s; keen to focus to the areas that provide greater, better quality services to the community. His contribution would be aligning financial resources and systems in such a way that greatly contributes towards the continuous improvement of the core services.  

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Physiotherapy & Occupational Therapy Team

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Leandra Cardoso - Physiotherapist

Leandra has a Master's degree in physiotherapy with a specialisation in neurological rehabilitation (children and adults), which proved to be very relevant in the intervention and development of clinical reasoning in MSK.   Leandra is experienced with acupuncture for physiotherapists applied to MSK: Face and Spine, Upper and Lower Limbs.   She has 12 years experience as a physiotherapist and has been a lecturer for seven years, with a bachelor's degree in physiotherapy. 

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Wendy Dungey - Physiotherapist

During her career, Wendy has worked with many aspects of Physiotherapy. Initially she specialised in Neurology at the Churchill Hospital before moving to work in Orthopaedics at the Nuffield Orthopaedic centre.  Later on, her career took her to work at the Radcliffe Infirmary to work with the elderly.  Wendy joined St Lukes in a senior role working mainly with elderly patients with age related conditions.  Wendy has also worked in the community and with outpatients at St Lukes following discharge to provide a continuation of care.  She is part of a strong multidisciplinary team that are able to combine their skills to help patients with their physical and mental needs.

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Kris Malkiewicz - Physiotherapist

Kris graduated as a Physiotherapist in Poland at 2005. He started working as a Massage Therapist initially and in 2008 specialised as a moving and handling trainer in a care home. In his spare time Kris like to be active and exercise at the gym which assisted him to do a personal training qualification in 2015. A few years later Kris started work in the MSK department at Wallingford community Hospital. Kris currently shares his time with providing home Physiotherapy sessions as well as working at St. Luke’s hospital sins 2019 treating patients with various needs but especially orthopaedics, mobility and age related conditions.

 

Belinda McLean - Occupational Therapist 

Belinda has over 25 years clinical experience in the physical rehabilitation of adults and older adults. She has worked in both acute and community settings across Oxfordshire and has a diverse network of professional contacts and connections.  Belinda continually updates her knowledge in the field of rehabilitation and feels very fortunate to work alongside such highly skilled colleagues in the fields of nursing and physiotherapy. She enjoys learning, recently gaining a distinction in the field of Systems Thinking with the Open University and currently studying to become an ARNI registered Stroke Specialist.

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Joanna Prem - Physiotherapist

Joanna graduated in 2010 with a MSc in Physiotherapy in Poland. She moved to Oxford and 2012 and since has been working in the private sector. In 2015, Joanna undertook two years Cranio-Sacral Therapy training at the College of Cranio-Sacral. Joanna has experience treating a wide range of patients. She has been in the Physiotherapy Department at St Luke’s Hospital since 2017. Joanna treats adults with complex needs, including, but not limited to neurological, orthopaedic, musculoskeletal and age related conditions. Joanna is passionate about a holistic approach towards health and believes that our bodies and minds have great potential that can be discovered and enhanced in everyone; regardless of age or condition.

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Edyta Tchorzewska - Physiotherapist

Edyta has over 20 years of experience working as a Physiotherapist. From 1999-2016 she worked in a large public hospital in Poland and was treating in-patients and out-patients with various conditions including musculoskeletal, orthopaedic and neurological. After obtaining her Master's Degree in 2008 alongside with her work at the hospital she was teaching classes for physiotherapy students, mainly in a neurosurgery subject. Since moving to the UK in 2016 she has worked within the private and NHS sector, including intermediate care, assessing and treating patients with neurological, orthopaedic and age-related conditions with complex disability. Edyta is a Physiotherapist registered with The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and is a member of The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP).

 

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St Luke's Hospital Trustees

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Luke Ponsonby - Chair of Trustees

Luke was a partner of stockbrokers Cazenove & Co where he managed investments on behalf of charities and individuals. He is now a Trustee for, amongst others, a prostate cancer charity and a cathedral trust. His family has had a long-standing involvement with St Luke’s which he is delighted to be able to continue in his role.

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Peter Burge

Peter Burge is Honorary Consultant Hand Surgeon at Oxford University Hospital and Departmental Lecturer in Orthopaedic Surgery at Oxford University.  He has had several roles in the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, especially in the organisation of teaching and training of young surgeons.  He is currently Scientific Advisor for the Journal of Hand Surgery (European volume) and also reviews papers for this and for other journals.

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Graham Candy

Graham is a Chartered Surveyor and former Chairman of Carter Jonas property consultants (now a consultant with the firm).  As part of his professional career, he is a RICS Registered Valuer.  Alongside his trustees work for St Luke's, Graham is a member of the Governing Body of Dragon School Trust Ltd and Trustee of Mikwano Children’s Trust , Uganda.

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Juliet Norman

Juliet graduated from Exeter University and worked in property, primarily in the property development arm of Taylor Woodrow.  She worked on large London residential developments from planning stage to final sales.  While raising four children she trained at the College of Naturopathic Medicine for three years where she followed a lifelong passion and now works in her own practice of personalised nutrition and lifestyle practice.  She also visits groups, private or business, to guide a programme of optimum health and nutrition.  Juliet draws on her various working experiences to contribute to the work of St Luke’s Hospital, Oxford.

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Helen Van Oss

Helen originally trained and worked as an Occupational Therapist but then decided to change to medicine. Helen trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and progressed into General Practice in Oxfordshire, completing some 30+ years in Woodstock.  Helen retired in 2013 and continued some work with the Oxfordshire Commissioning Group and Patient forums until 2020.

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Tina Welford

Tina has significant experience of working in both the private and public sector in a variety of roles including operational and strategic director level posts. Tina held the positions of Nurse Fellowship at the RCN and Director of Patient and Nursing Services in a large acute NHS Trust. She maintains her nursing qualification. Tina has set up her own company providing coaching, leadership and management training and development. Tina also provides independent investigatory services, as well as an Expert Witness regarding CQC, covering areas such as safeguarding, complaints, whistleblowing and harassment and grievance cases to the public, local government, education and private social and health care sectors. For the past 5 years she has been the Vice-chair and lay member of a Roman Catholic Safeguarding Commission.

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Martin Wilkinson - Treasurer

Martin is a qualified accountant (CIMA) , who has spent over 40 years in financial management in a business environment. His most significant role, for over 15 years, was Financial Director of an international academic publishing company. Over the past twenty years he has held a number of non executive roles on educational and charity Boards, mainly as Treasurer or Chair.

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Sir Tim Stevenson KCVO OBE - President of St Luke's Hospital

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Our team are always available to answer any questions or queries you may have.

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