Dr Sarah El-Sheikha
Sarah studied medicine at the University of Liverpool, graduating with an Honours degree. She is currently in her final year of training in Anaesthesia in the Mersey Deanery with the aim of subspecialisation in Paediatric Anaesthesia.
Sarah has an interest in improving services in low and middle income countries (LMICs). In 2019, Sarah was awarded the prestigious opportunity to act as a Senior Clinical Fellow for the Zambia Anaesthesia Development Scheme (ZADP), supported by the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
In Zambia she was tasked with creating an innovative, scalable and frugal solution to training in Quality Improvement (QI). The QI Community was thus created and was subsequently presented internationally by the Zambian Government to the World Health Organisation. She was involved with the national implementation of e-learning modules for safe blood transfusion aimed at health care professionals. This was an international project liaising with the National Blood Transfusion Service of Zambia and the Scottish government. Working in Zambia, she recognised that many problems could be resolved with the overhaul of inefficient processes and the implementation of more streamlined and efficient pathways.
Sarah has a pragmatic and realistic approach to projects and aims to improve the quality of care for patients and staff. Recently she has been working to reduce the time paediatric patients are fasted and in hospital waiting for elective cardiac surgery."
Sarah applied for the National Medical Director's Clinical Fellowship to improve her skills in senior management. She looks forward to 'a truly unique opportunity to be mentored by some of the most effective and efficient leaders within the NHS. Furthermore working at a senior level will provide a greater understanding of how these large organisations work with each other'.
Sarah is passionate about medical leadership and is driven to try and improve services for both patients and clinicians. Her experience in Zambia taught her that solutions can often be found by aiding networking amongst key stakeholders. Her success in Zambia demonstrated that projects did not necessarily require financial support but time and interpersonal skills supporting colleagues in influencing change. During her fellowship she hopes to improve on these skills and learn how to become a more effective leader.
Sarah is looking forward to undertaking this fellowship as a senior trainee so the skills learnt can be used to influence positive change in her future consultant career.
