Nursing was always a childhood ambition of mine and I achieved this goal by qualifying from Liverpool John Moore’s University in 1995.
The majority of my early career was within various NHS hospitals within the North west working from Staff Nurse to Ward Manager on a variety of wards including colo-rectal, urology and gynaecology. I also spent some time as a research nurse working at Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology on commercial trials and this gave me a greater understanding of the importance of robust processes and governance structures.
I left the NHS in 2012 to join HCA Healthcare UK at The Christie Private Care which is a joint venture with The Christie NHS Foundation Trust holding initially the Ward Manager post and was promoted to Matron in 2017. During my time as Matron, The Christie Private Care achieved an outstanding rating by the CQC, holding the highest rating for any private provider at the time. One of my biggest professional achievements was leading my team to achieve outstanding in the safe domain of the inspection which was unprecedented at the time.
I have been at Oaklands for a short time and am extremely excited for the future. My vision is to provide strong clinical leadership to the teams and empower staff to be the very best they can. I am keen to create a culture whereby we can support each other, are transparent and open when reporting incidents and near misses, learn when things don’t go was well as we’d hoped and are able to do this is a supportive and collaborative way.
A positive patient experience is a passion for me, and with our partnership with SRFT this is true of all patients who are treated here. Every patient should be treated with dignity and respect and I enjoy being visible in the clinical areas and talking to patients and their families to gain that real time feedback.
My mid-term goal for Oaklands is to achieve an outstanding rating. The teams here are aware that we are working towards that and that I want Oaklands to be the hospital within the group that others look at enviously due to what we are achieving. Following securing that outstanding, then we need to work on a beyond outstanding plan. Sustaining outstanding and continually improving will be the long term plan but one I am confident we can achieve.
I have recently been studying for a MSc at Salford University in Healthcare Management & Leadership and once I have established myself in this role, am keen to restart my studies to support the operational experience gained at Oaklands.