Helen Bone

Helen’s story started at Teeside University where she graduated as a Nurse in 2003 following her degree. Helen’s journey was on pause before this due to having a cleft lip and pallet and multiple operations, so had to restart her examinations in college. Helen then went up and on through promotions becoming a respiratory nurse, a sister, ward manager and advanced critical care practitioner after her master’s degree.

Due to having a cleft lip at birth, the charity ‘British Cleft Foundation’ was very close to her heart. Helen fundraised so she was able to go to India with the British Cleft Foundation to aid in operations performed on babies and children born with these deformities. Helen went twice, once in 2014 and once in 2019 – raising money each time to fund these trips. Helen worked as an advanced critical care practitioner in James Cook University Hospital throughout the COVID pandemic, including long hours and time away from her family. She served as a Nurse for over 24 years. Always keen to learn, Helen researched and published an article in the BJN (British Journal of Nursing) in 2024 on assessing and examining the respiratory system. She also published another article “Advanced Practice: Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning” with her colleague and friend Sadie Diamond-Fox.

Progressing through her career as a nurse, Helen always aimed to better herself and her knowledge, striving to be the best she could be and learn anything she could. Helen was diagnosed with mesothelioma in August 2021; this meant she had to retire due to ill health. After this time, she chose to not let the diagnosis ruin her life, but to embrace it. She campaigned both nationally and internationally for mesothelioma and dedicated her last years to raising awareness for this avoidable disease. She started government petitions to remove asbestos from public buildings, which got over 10,000 signatures. She interviewed on multiple news stations, including ITV, to raise awareness and was published in an The Daily Mail newspaper. She also taught BLS (basic life support) to children in secondary schools. Additionally, she mas in multiple support groups to help others deal with their diagnosis and constantly worked to raise money to support these people – making many friends along the way. Helen did so many things in her life with the passion of helping others, fighting tirelessly to make any changes big or small.