Tell us about your journey into the NHS and what you would do differently, if anything?
I joined the NHS on the management graduate training scheme, spending the first 3 months shadowing staff across the health and care system. Experiences included blue lighting down Oxford Street with the London Ambulance Service, shadowing mortuary technicians, seeing social care staff in action, observing knee surgery and shadowing a wide range of roles from porters to receptionists to mental health nurses to GPs and voluntary sector teams. Managed to spend some time at Whitehall observing a meeting between a Junior Minister for Health & the Chief Executive of the NHS (DBTH’s very own David Nicholson at the time). It was a fantastic way to enter the NHS, a rich learning experience and left me with amazing memories and some great stories!
After that did two placements managing outpatients at Central Middlesex Hospital and working on the Primary Care Collaborative project to improve access to GP surgeries. I was also really fortunate to spend some time working in Tanzania at the Aga Khan Health Network on the HIV/ AIDS pandemic. It was a fantastic entry to the NHS & I wouldn’t change anything about it
If you were stuck in a lift with anybody who would it be and why?
Some of my inspiring women below plus Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela.
Your most inspirational female icon, past or present?
Impossible to give you one! Inspirational women for me include Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst for their pioneering work for civil rights and the Suffragette movement. I find the largely female team that developed the Oxford COVID vaccine in record time team pretty inspiring… And as a sports fan everything that Serena Williams has achieved on & off the tennis court.
And a little closer to home, my Granny who did fire watch in Hull during the Blitz & after the war responded to the desperate need for teachers, taking her baby (my Dad) into the class a few months after giving birth. And throughput never stopped singing (badly).
What is your favourite food and most disliked, and why?
Anything involving fish, rounded off with a packet of crisps… For disliked, marmalade and mushy peas
Do you have any phobias
Not found any yet
What did you want to be when you were a little girl
I wanted to have a different job every day including being a vet, zoo keeper, writer and teacher. I have to admit that being a NHS manager never crossed my mind at this tender age.
Tell us something funny about yourself
I once set myself alight with a flaming Sambuca