Dr Fatima Dalal
Fatima is a senior dermatology registrar in the West Midlands and a member of the British Association of Dermatologists. She was born and grew up in Cornwall. Fatima graduated from Keele Medical School in 2015, completed foundation training in Birmingham, core medical training in London and gained membership to the Royal College of Physicians in 2020.
Prior to specialty training, Fatima led a team of authors publishing a clinical review on management following percutaneous coronary intervention in the British Medical Journal in 2017. More recently, Fatima was a site-lead and collaborator for the United Kingdom-wide quality improvement project on sustainability in dermatological minor surgeries, which won the British Association of Dermatology Green Prize in 2022. She currently reviews for the peer-reviewed journal, Clinical and Experimental Dermatology. She has presented her work at regional, national and international conferences; most recently at the World Congress of Dermatology 2023 in Singapore.
Alongside clinical commitments Fatima has advocated for her fellow dermatology registrars as a deanery trainee representative from 2022-2023. She has sat on regional and national training committees and contributed to the development of the General Medical Council's national training survey which impacts on national postgraduate healthcare education.
Outside of medicine Fatima enjoys running. She completed the London Marathon in 2021, raising money for a food bank where she volunteered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reason for applying for the scheme
Working in the NHS since 2012, Fatima has experienced the positive impact of effective medical leadership on benefiting the patient, the workforce and the healthcare organisation. The current economic and post-pandemic pressures on the NHS requires effective clinical leadership to direct policy reforms.
Fatima recognises that leadership skills can be difficult to develop in frontline medicine. Her motivation for applying for the National Medical Director's Clinical Fellow Scheme was the unique opportunity it presents in developing leadership skills at management level, gaining an overarching perspective of the NHS and building networks to positively impact healthcare policy. As a south-Asian woman of East African Indian heritage she believes that racial and gender balance at senior management and board level is vital in national organisations such as the NHS.
Fatima feels hugely privileged to be appointed as a fellow to the UK Health Security Agency where she hopes to form collaborative relationships, learn and be involved in public health policy development and to take away skills to positively impact the healthcare system as a future medical leader within and beyond her specialty.
