She trained at the Wolfson School of Nursing, Westminster Hospital (RGN, 1976), and at South London and Maudsley Nursing School (RMN, 1979).

[1] She was awarded a Florence Nightingale Foundation Scholarship, and obtained her PhD from King's College London in 1985.

She was nominated for life peerage by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, and was created Baroness Watkins of Tavistock, of Buckland Monachorum in the County of Devon, on 2 November 2015.

In 2019 she was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing.

[3] She served as co-chair of the 2020 World Health Organization's review of the State of the World Nursing, as co-chair of the Burdett Trust's Nursing Now initiative, and for seven years was President of the Florence Nightingale Foundation.