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Obituary: Judy Waterlow MBE

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Obituary: Judy Waterlow MBE

Jacqui Fletcher
12 September 2021

I was immensely saddened to hear of the death of Judy Waterlow, she has been a constant part of my (and many others) wound care journey. Judy trained as a nurse at St Thomas’s hospital in the early 1950s, after taking time out to have her 3 daughters (all of whom became nurses) she returned to nursing in the 1970s as a Clinical Tutor. (https://www.nursingtimes.net/ archive/judy-waterlow-pressure-ulcer-carereformer- 01-03-2010/) She developed the Waterlow Score while working as a Clinical Tutor in Taunton in 1985 (and later updated it in 2005) and the little yellow cards that were the way we all remembered the score became the bedrock of many clinicians’ practice. Whilst many have criticised the score and decried the amount of research behind it, for those in practice it was a safe haven, a familiar framework to work from and how wonderful it was that Judy took the time to write the Waterlow Score handbook to help improve the way the system was interpreted and guide our teaching.

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