Chris Wilkinson, director of nursing at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Responsible for 1,000 nurses and midwives, and £4.4million budget.

Nursing may be a female-dominated field, but directors in large organisations are more often than not men. But Chris Wilkinson knows how it feels to be both nurse and director.

"I still think of myself as a nurse," said Chris (48). "And I still use the knowledge I have from being a nurse and teaching nurses, but also a lot of the skills. As a director I have to be able to explain things clearly to different groups of people, as nurses do."

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"I think women are particularly excellent at clinical nursing because they are instinctively good at nurturing, and that this, as well as the flexibility around working hours, which enables them to balance work and family commitments, is the reason why many of them go into nursing and happily stay in the profession.

"The reason many of them stay in nursing rather than pursue careers in management may be because nursing does offer a lot of flexibility as far as working hours are concerned – nurses can work evening shifts, bank shifts or at weekends.

"Although having said that, the NHS is really good in terms of equality all-round: there are six directors in the trust, and three of us are women."

"When I think about my own success I suppose I would say that when you look at the NHS, most of its employees are nurses, and most of them tend to be women, and so it makes sense that a proportion of them will rise to a senior level."