Vanessa is a registered nurse, Associate Professor, and Director of Pre-Registration Nursing. She has extensive expertise and experience in learning, teaching and assessing, with a research focus on compassion and self-compassion in education and clinical practice.
Based on our Peterborough campus, Vanessa is the Director of Pre-Registration Nursing, leading on innovative, high-quality education for students on nursing and nursing associate programmes across all ARU campuses.
Having qualified as a registered nurse in 1992, Vanessa worked in emergency nursing, acute medical admissions, and intensive care before moving into higher education in 1999.
Vanessa has extensive experience of pre- and post-registration teaching, learning and assessing, curriculum design and curriculum development, and led the development, approval, implementation and management of the all-graduate nursing curriculum across Essex and Cambridgeshire. She works collaboratively with stakeholders across Essex and Cambridgeshire to ensure high-quality, contemporary, fit-for-purpose nurse education.
Vanessa supports students and staff at all academic levels, including undergraduate major project supervision and PhD supervision. As an HEA Principal Fellow, she is also a mentor and reviewer for HEA Fellowship applications.
Outside of ARU, she is an experienced external examiner for nursing and nursing associate programmes at institutions across the UK, and member of the Compassion in HE network, and the Compassionate Assessment network.
With a PhD focused on the experiences of student nurses applying self-compassion, Vanessa also runs compassion and self-compassion workshops for healthcare professionals across the UK, and is involved in research projects exploring the experience of applying self-compassion.
Vanessa’s research interests focus on values, compassion and self-compassion, and effective learning tools to enhance these in pre-registration education.
Elobaid, Y., Abdallatif, R., Ezirim, G. and Waller, V. (2026) ‘Exploring the implementation of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) 2018 standards in nursing education: a mixed-methods study protocol’, Next Research, 4, 101219. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nexres.2025.101219
Waller, V. (2021) 'Applying self-compassion: the experience of student nurses', PhD thesis, ARU.
Waller, V. (2015) 'Compassion in pre-registration education: students’ experiences of applying self-compassion', Partners in Practice, RCN Education Forum National Conference, Nottingham, March.
Waller, V. (2014) 'Self-compassion: nurturing a better future', Everybody’s business – our aging population, Chelmsford, UK, 9 July.
Waller, V. (2013) 'Compassion in pre-registration education: the development of an effective learning tool', Putting people at the heart of nursing care, Phi Mu Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI), Nursing Honour Society Inaugural Conference, Bournemouth, June.