IN-DEPTH: CAREER PROGRESSION


“I’VE GROWN SO MUCH HERE”


In 11 years at the Trust, Nick Spencer-Jones has gone from phlebotomist to business manager. He explains how he gained the confidence and skills to move up the career ladder.


confident. I sometimes felt invisible – some staff wouldn’t bother to learn my name and referred to all phlebotomists as ‘the phleb’. It could be demoralising. But phlebotomists play a huge part in our Trust. Without someone taking blood, you can’t make a decision about a patient’s care and treatment. A few months after I started, I decided to audit the phlebotomists’ work on the ward to see if there was room for us to improve. We used to start taking bloods from patients at around 10am and it took several hours to process the samples and return results, so doctors weren’t able to make decisions about patients’ care until late in the day. In my audit, I found that if doctors requested bloods the night before they needed results, phlebotomists could start work earlier in the day and speed up that process for patients. Despite not being very confident in myself at the time, I was really proud of that audit.


W 4 /Pulse


PUSHING TO PROGRESS I wanted to learn more about patient pathways so, in my own time, I


hen I started as a band two phlebotomist at St Mary’s Hospital I wasn’t very


shadowed the discharge team and learned how they really go the extra mile to support patients to get the right care and to get home quickly when they are ready to leave hospital. After 18 months as a phlebotomist, I became a discharge coordinator, and eventually a discharge team manager. I met with patients and their families to help them progress to the next step of their care, whether that was moving to a rehabilitation facility, going home to recover or getting the right end of life support. Working with colleagues across the Trust and in the community, we were able to make a difference for a lot of people. I also enrolled in the Trust’s


Foundations management course – that was a turning point for me. It was led by Clare Shimell, who inspired me to push myself to progress. The course taught me a lot about shared leadership and effective decision making. I loved it so much I sent most of my team on the course, and many of them have since moved on to more senior roles too. That gave me the courage to consider moving into a more senior operational role myself, and I became a service manager in ophthalmology.


IMPLEMENTING IMPROVEMENTS There were a lot of challenges when I arrived at the Western Eye. But we’ve


Nick’s development roadmap:


Foundations: A 15-month introduction to management course


Coaching and leading for improvement: Learn how to coach a team to deliver positive changes


Aspire: A 12-month development programme for senior leaders


Visit the intranet for more information.


achieved so much as a team, especially over the past couple of years as part of the ‘Experience Lab’ improvement programme for outpatient services. We found that the text reminder approach wasn’t right for all our patients, so we introduced phone calls too. We identified how to manage our clinic bookings more effectively, which brought down the rate of hospital initiated cancellations. We installed tea and coffee stations for our patients. We realised our hospitals can be overwhelming, so we worked with Imperial Health Charity to bring in volunteers to greet patients, provide refreshments and signpost to clinics. In August 2018, we went paperless, making full use of the electronic patient


www.imperial.nhs.uk


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20