Aspiring Improvers 2019 Cohort
Aneta Kolatorowicz
Cancer Information Officer Macmillan Support and Information Service at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Aneta Kolatorowicz joined the Macmillan Support and Information Service at UCLH in 2015 as a cancer information officer. Her role is to ensure that the information they develop is of high-quality, accurate and accessible, and can support people with cancer to make choices about their care and treatment. Aneta works closely with clinical teams to achieve that, editing and reviewing information in line with standards set out by the NHS Constitution, Care Quality Commission, NHS Accessible Information Standard and Plain English Campaign, to name a few.
Aneta is a qualified teacher of English as a foreign language and has BA in Linguistics. She has been working in the field of health information since 2006, initially in the private sector. Aneta moved on to work in the NHS in 2009, setting up the patient information network and embedding the information approval process at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and leading a small patient information team at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
Aneta hopes this programme equips her with the relevant skills she can apply to lead to a more efficient and streamlined way of working.
Audrey Ward
Senior Staff Nurse North Middlesex University Hospital Trust
Audrey Ward is a senior staff nurse, currently working at Accident and Emergency at North Middlesex Hospital. Audrey is extremely passionate about developing services and learning new things. She is always willing to inspire others to deliver services that is cost effective and beneficial to patients, care givers, professionals and the wider system.
Audrey hopes the programme will allow her to have access to a repository of diverse skills, knowledge and experience of her peers. In addition, she is keen to learn the processes involved in Quality Improvement (QI) to further improve her confidence so that she will be able to guide/advise the healthcare establishment for QI and would like to know the approaches and methods for its successful and sustainable implementation.
Deepa Santhosh
Baby Friendly Initiative Project Lead, Whipps Cross University Hospital
Deepa Santhosh is an infant feeding specialist and works as a project lead for the Baby Friendly Initiative in the maternity unit at Whipps Cross hospital, Barts Health. The Baby Friendly Initiative is an evidence based, staged accreditation programme that enables supporting families with infant feeding and building close, loving relationships as a family unit. This involves implementation of best practice standards in terms of policies & guidelines, delivering staff training, auditing skills & knowledge, monitoring care and offering a lactation specialist service.
Deepa is also a birth educator, doula and a hypnobirthing practitioner with over 9 years of experience of working in maternity services in both India and the UK. She is very keen to impact a woman’s experience through the maternity care services by empowering maternity staff in making small, practical yet meaningful changes to their practice that can make significant improvement in a mother’s journey.
Deepa would like to focus on the relationship between the care provider and the woman/family and to improve communication in terms of informed consent, respecting and enabling choice that optimises both the needs of the woman and the care provider.
Elizabeth Hunt
Specialist Optometrist Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Elizabeth Hunt is a specialist optometrist working full time at Moorfields Eye Hospital. She works across many specialities including medical contact lenses, glaucoma, medical retina and paediatrics. She is keen to become more involved in service improvement and is hoping to use the aspiring improvers programme to learn more about implementing positive changes that improve patients care, within the NHS.
Elizabeth is passionate about ensuring the highest possible standards of care are consistently delivered to patients. It is through sustainable improvement projects that she hopes to make positive changes within the organisation at which she works.
Elizabeth looks forward to commencing this programme to meet with other individuals who share the same drive for creating positive change within their organisation.
Jigna Shah
Nurse Practitioner in Pain Management University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Jigna Shah graduated in Nursing from University of Hertfordshire in 2009. On qualifying she worked at St Thomas’ Hospital in the Recovery and Critical Care unit before moving to UCLH where she was specialised in surgical and critical care nursing.
At present Jigna is a Nurse Practitioner in Pain Management. Her job involves the assessment, treatment and long term pain management according to the patients individual needs. Educating staff and patients is a big part of the job role, as well as performing audits and ensuring a high standard of care is delivered.
Jigna is passionate about improving patient outcomes and striving to deliver high quality of evidence based care. She hopes to build on her knowledge and experience and collaborate with other professionals to undertake quality improvement projects within the NHS.
Karin Dewing
Reporting Radiographer North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust
Karin Dewing is a Band 7 Reporting Radiographer at the North Middlesex Hospital. Last year she became the Quality Manager role within the x-ray department working towards gaining accreditation with the Imaging Service Accreditation Scheme (ISAS). Whilst maintaining a clinical role Karin also leads risk assessments throughout imaging and coordinates data collection and audit.
Karin is always looking at ways of improving the patient and staff experience. Attendance at the trust datix meetings have given her a wider perspective of risk and improvement across the whole hospital. She has recently completed a project of making the imaging department more child friendly using charity money from the Trust.
Karin is looking forward to being a member of the 2019 Aspiring Improvers Cohort and hopes to gain confidence in leading improvement projects and learn strategies to support and develop others. It is a great opportunity to meet people from different areas within the NHS and hear their tales of improvement.
Martin O’Sullivan
Theatre Coordinators Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital
Martin O’Sullivan is one of four theatre coordinators working at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. His main role is to ensure the safe and efficient use of 10 operating theatres. This includes the scheduling of the operation as well as the allocation of the staff depending on their knowledge and experience. Martin is required to ensure each theatre starts and finishes on time as well as scheduling emergency cases and covering theatres which may overrun due to unforeseen circumstances. When Martin isn’t coordinating he is an anaesthetic technician, this role is to assist the anaesthetist to perform local and general anaesthetics on patients undergoing surgical procedures or circulate in theatre as required.
Martin joined the NHS in 2001 as a hospital porter and then a care assistant before qualifying as an ODP in 2004. Martin has covered several different roles in the NHS including Patient Safety Manager and Clinical Governance Coordinator for a major NHS hospital surgical division. Martin returned to a theatre role in 2017 bringing years of experience with him in patient safety, governance monitoring and Root Cause Analysis investigations. Martin has a keen interest in proficient theatre utilisation and he hopes that the Aspiring Improvers Programme will help to meet like-minded individuals willing to share their knowledge and experiences.
Rebecca Tibbs
Senior Clinical Scientist in Clinical Biochemistry Barts Health NHS Trust
Rebecca Tibbs is a Senior Clinical Scientist in Clinical Biochemistry at Barts Health NHS Trust. In this role, she provides interpretation of laboratory results and advice on biochemical investigations to clinical staff. She is also involved in the validation and implementation of new methods and assays in the clinical biochemistry department. Becca joined the department in July 2018 and became a registered Clinical Scientist in October 2018.
Becca hopes that participation in the Aspiring Improvers programme will help her to make a positive contribution to her department, and will help the laboratory to make efficient use of resources to support excellent patient care. She also hopes to gain insights into quality improvement, to build upon existing skills which can be taken forward throughout her career in the NHS, and looks forward to the opportunity to share best practice with similarly-motivated individuals from across the health and social care sector.
Richard Daniels
Paediatric Trainee in General Paediatrics & Neonatology North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust
Richard Daniels is a paediatric trainee, currently working in General Paediatrics & Neonatology at North Middlesex Hospital. Long term, he’d like to be a general paediatrician with an as yet undecided clinical special interest and a non-clinical special interest in wellbeing and improvement.
Richard has previously worked across several trusts all over London and Essex and has been involved in various improvement projects to date, ranging from changing surgical antibiotic regimens to introducing an electronic induction/how to system to his trust. He’s now looking to bring his passion for human factors and wellbeing to improve the “human resource” at his trust.
Richard is a self-confessed improvement zealot because of its universal, grassroots nature. He believes that by harnessing the ideas and talent of the workforce, amazing things can happen, which benefit staff and improve the system, ultimately leading to better patient care – everyone wins. As part of the Aspiring Improvers programme, he is looking forward to learning more about how to make improvements stick, how to determine appropriate metrics to use and to work in a genuinely multidisciplinary team to look at alternative perspectives on improvement.
Simon Phillips
Speech and Language Therapist NHS Tower Hamlets
Simon Phillips works across schools and the community in Tower Hamlets to support children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN), their families and schools. He has over 10 years of experience working within the NHS – across a number of different roles – including the last five years working as a Speech and Language Therapist.
Simon is interested in how software can be used to support children, young people and their families to better understand information given to them by the professionals who see them.
Teopista Ssemakula
National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures Lead Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust
Teopista Ssemakula currently works as the Band 7 NatSSIPs (National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures) Lead at the Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust. In this role she supports the delivery of MDT human factors training and coaching for perioperative teams.
Teo’s background is Adult Nursing and she has worked in Operating Theatres as a Scrub Nurse/Associate Team Leader for ten years. She is also a key mentor and revalidation champion.
Teo hopes through this programme, to gain skills and support to build her confidence and capability in improvement knowledge and delivery.
Zoe Hayward
Clinical Facilitator for Theatres Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital
Zoe Hayward has worked in the NHS since she was 18 starting out as an HCA and working her way up to an Operating Department Practitioner. She has worked at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital for 14 years, mainly in a scrub role capacity. Zoe also spent two years working in the pre-operative assessment department, before her new role as Clinical Facilitator for Theatres.
Zoe’s current role as Clinical Facilitator for Theatres requires liaising with company representatives on in house training for all theatre equipment and this necessitates her to compose clinical competencies for staff. Zoe also assists with new student nurses coming into the department and newly qualified nurses with completing their preceptorship.
Zoe is hoping the Aspiring Improvers programme will enable her to change the way theatre support workers are allocated and used in theatres. She would like to engage them in a learning programme which will enable them to become theatre practitioners, which will in turn help with the staffing issues currently in theatre.