Nurse hopefuls will be seeking your vote in May's general election

Nurses are among the candidates hoping to be elected to Parliament in May’s general election.

Maria Caulfield, a cancer research nurse at the Royal Marsden hospital in London, is the Conservative hopeful for Lewes in East Sussex. She is aiming to oust Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker whose been MP for Lewes since 1997. 

Ms Caulfield has led a breast cancer research team as a research sister since 2004 and says she is passionate about protecting local NHS services. 

In Norwich South, community nurse Lesley Grahame is a Green Party candidate in one of their target seats – where Liberal Democrat MP Simon Wright has a majority of just 310 votes. 

She is also a city councillor and was selected as the party’s spokesperson for peace and disarmament. 

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who worked as a nurse at Warrington Hospital and the Royal Liverpool Teaching Hospital from 1975 to 1982, will be confident of defending her Mid Bedfordshire seat. 

First elected in 2005, she held her seat in 2010 with a 27.6% lead. She has previously run a school in Africa and more recently took part in the ITV reality show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!

Former public health minister and Conservative MP Anne Milton will be defending her Guildford seat in Surrey.

After training as a nurse and working in the NHS for 25 years, she won the seat in 2005 from the Liberal Democrats by 347 votes and was re-elected in 2010 with a majority of 7,782. 

She has worked in hospitals and as a district nurse. A former RCN steward, she has also been a chair of a branch of the National Childbirth Trust and has sat on the Commons health committee.