Staff Profile
Hollie Starbuck
Before joining Buckinghamshire New University in 2020, I worked as a community Specialist Eating Disorder Nurse, providing group, individual and family-based treatments for those accessing the service. A large part of my work in this service was providing psycho-education to families to coach and empower them to help their child through the stages of an eating disorder. Prior to this, I worked within specialist eating disorder units working with children and adolescents who were admitted for crisis intervention.
I studied for my BSc at the University of Nottingham, obtaining 1st class honours. My specialist area of interests lies within the field of Eating Disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder and the stigma, attitudes and understanding of these diagnoses in healthcare staff. I am also interested in the relationship between early years experiences, attachment, and mental ill health in later years. Children’s and adolescent mental health is a growing pandemic within itself. A better understanding of both the implications of early year care and how to translate these findings into the wider community is imperative for the future health of our nation.
I am also a continuing member of the NMC.
My specialist knowledge has led me to work closely with partner professionals in paediatric care, parents and head teachers to improve identification, understanding and specialist treatment practices for those living with an eating disorder. The pathophysiology of an eating disorder is largely unknown across medical professionals and so a lot of my work was consulting for the paediatric team on safe management of the clinically very vulnerable. My work with these groups inspired my move to education in order to bring this and other specialist knowledge into nurse training.
My career highlight to date is seeing the progress my individual patients made over the course of their journey within our therapeutic space. Using a combination of motivational interviewing, person centred care, MANTRA, CBT techniques and unconditional positive regard, we worked together to reach recovery.