Anne Marie Rafferty

Anne Marie Rafferty, Baroness Rafferty, born on 7 May 1958, is a British nurse, historian and health workforce researcher. Born in Kirkcaldy in Fife, she trained in nursing at the University of Edinburgh, worked as a staff nurse in Nottingham, and took a doctorate in modern history at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Oxford, where she is widely cited as the first nurse to earn an Oxford DPhil. She became professor of nursing policy and dean of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at Kings College London. Her research into the healthcare workforce was the first to establish a link between nurse staffing and patient mortality in the United Kingdom. She advised the Department of Health on the NHS Next Stage Review, served on the Prime Minister Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery, was President of the Royal College of Nursing from 2019 to 2021, and was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2020.