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Charlene Wallace, who was involved in the leadership and start up development of the University’s Diagnostic Radiography course has spent much of her career helping people understand what happens inside the body. But her own experience of healthcare, first as a patient and now as someone living with Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) - a rare and often misunderstood condition - has shaped her teaching.

ME is a long-term condition that can cause debilitating fatigue and a range of other severe symptoms, with even everyday physical or mental activity potentially leaving people needing significant rest and recovery. Living with ME means that even a day of teaching can come at a significant physical and cognitive cost, due to ME’s characteristic post-exertional malaise (PEM). Charlene must carefully balance teaching with pacing and rest, and a day at work can mean spending days in bed recovering.

She is mostly housebound and, when she does make it to campus, may need to use her wheelchair to get through the day. The condition affects her home life too, limiting what she can do outside work. Despite the limitations imposed by the condition, Charlene has remained positive and determined to continue teaching and working with radiography students.

Now following a nomination by one of her students, Charlene has been shortlisted for the Radiography Educator of the Year at the 2026 Radiography Awards to be held in London on 11 November.

Charlene said: “Living with ME has completely changed the way I think about whose voices are being heard in healthcare. I know from my own experience as a patient how easy it can be for the service-user voice to get lost. That has made me even more passionate about making sure our students understand the person behind the condition, not just what they see clinically. I want them to leave university thinking about how they can listen, challenge inequality and make healthcare more inclusive’’.

“I absolutely love working with my students and it is incredibly rewarding seeing them develop, so to know that one of them felt I had made enough of an impact to nominate me is incredibly special. I didn’t even know I was in the running until I found out I had made the final, so I was completely overwhelmed. Whatever happens at the awards, I’m already incredibly proud to have been nominated.”

Diagnostic Radiography student, Lily Harman, who nominated Charlene for the award said: “Charlene has been such an important source of support and encouragement throughout my time at ͯÑÕÊÓƵ. She has always believed in me, often at times when I haven’t fully believed in myself and her encouragement has played a huge part in giving me the confidence to pursue my research and ambitions within radiography. I nominated her because the difference she makes to her students extends far beyond teaching, and I’m so pleased to see that recognised.”

As part of her diagnostic radiography curriculum development, Charlene ensures her radiography students are offered dedicated sessions on menopause awareness and mental health discrimination, encouraging students to consider how inequalities can affect people's experiences of diagnosis, treatment and care.

She is also open about her experience of ME, a condition she says is often misunderstood, under researched and underfunded. When she first began going out in a wheelchair, she felt self-conscious and insecure, but her sister reminded her that she could never know who might see her and feel less alone and inspired because of it.

Her national award nomination now offers recognition not simply for the courses she has helped build or the hundreds of students she has taught, but for the difference she is making in how future healthcare professionals understand patients, inequality and the importance of listening to the people they are there to serve.

Staff related to this story

Senior Lecturer – School of Education, Sport and Health