I am an ST8 in Paediatric Intensive Care, currently working in NHS England Specialised Commissioning. My first day as a doctor was in August 2003, and one of the benefits of spending so long in training is the opportunities that arise. Having taken on various local and regional leadership roles, in 2009/10 I joined a programme called Prepare to Lead, sponsored by Ruth Carnall, then CEO of NHS London. As part of the programme, I was allocated a mentor, who was a director at NHS London.
Walking into her offices in Victoria was a real light-bulb moment for me – I couldn’t believe the number of people working for the NHS who weren’t doctors or nurses. What had previously been the ‘black box’ of NHS management had started to be revealed to me. I suddenly went from blissful unconscious incompetence to far less comfortable conscious incompetence, and the veil was lifted – I could see every day in my clinical role how much of the way that I delivered care was determined away from the bedside. I wanted to understand more about the context in which I was working in the NHS and what I could do to influence it.
In 2015, I took another leadership role as a National Medical Director’s Clinical Fellow with NHS England. Six weeks into the role, the learning curve was steep. I’m now embedded in my team and learning by doing.
I’ve been working outside of my comfort zone, learning new skills including project management, time management, presentation skills, planning and chairing professional meetings, and basic office etiquette! I have developed more self-awareness, working out what I’m good at naturally and what I have to work at. It has been a tremendous privilege to have fantastic access to inspirational and interesting senior healthcare leaders, and I have seen how much successful leadership and management is about understanding people and developing relationships.
As clinical fellows, we don’t just offer our organisations another capable pair of hands – though we are generally a motivated and hard working bunch, we offer a different perspective, seeing problems and solutions from a different angle; not just a fresh pair of eyes, but using a different filter.
My undergraduate university experience, which began in 1997, was not dissimilar to that of my parents. There was no internet; if I wanted to look up something I had to go to the library; journal articles were photocopied from huge tomes; lectures were given from slides or acetates and my exam results were posted on the wall.
In the ten years between me starting and those fellows who are just past F2, training has been transformed by technology. And technology has transformed culture. The internet, social media, access to information and people and the ability to interact and obtain immediate feedback have changed the way we think and feel and our expectations as a society. Hierarchies are flattening, we have a different view of authority, transparency is taken as a given and we aren’t afraid of it.
We all know that in another ten years’ time, the NHS won’t be delivering care in the same way it does now. At that point, I don’t want to be standing on the sidelines shrugging my shoulders despondently or wringing my hands in despair – I want to be one of the architects of the future, and I can’t think of a better way to equip myself with the right tools than the Clinical Fellow Scheme.
