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Meet the New Member: Julia Gray

Each month we'll be introducing you to a new Q member – this month we hear from Julia Gray, who's looking forward to making new connections and drawing on the wealth of expertise in the Q community.

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Tell us a little bit about yourself and your improvement journey.

I’ve been working as a chartered accountant in NHS finance for seventeen years. For over four years up to the end of 2018, I was a lead on a national NHS costing transformation programme where I worked with acute, ambulance, mental health and community providers to develop and implement a standardised patient-level costing approach. The purpose of the NHS costing transformation programme was to help providers understand their costs better, enable effective benchmarking and support national uses of cost data to support improvements in service design and delivery.

Although the organisation is responsible for transformation, it is the individual who must change what they do for the transformation to succeed

I quickly learnt as we progressed through the programme that change in the NHS is really difficult. Every time you hear someone say ‘we’ve tried it already and it didn’t work’, that’s an unsuccessful change programme. Although the organisation is responsible for transformation, it is the individual who must change what they do for the transformation to succeed. That is why both the organisation and the individual need to be supported in a time of change.

I am currently working at the West Midlands NHS Leadership Academy as their Business Transformation Lead. It is an exciting time for the academy as they are moving from a 10 academy regional footprint to a 7 region footprint. My role is to improve the business processes in place and to support the team in this time of unprecedented change.

What first attracted you to Q?

What attracted me to the Q community was the opportunity to work with like-minded people who are passionate about improvement in the NHS.

What I have learnt from working in transformation programmes is that transformation, improvement and implementation of new ways of working is a journey but it is not a journey you can do alone. We have to work hard to build good relationships with our finance and informatics colleagues, service managers, clinicians and other stakeholders. Only by working together can change really happen.

Improvement is not about hierarchy or titles but about supporting our colleagues as they do their best for patients and the NHS as a whole.

Improvement is not about hierarchy or titles but about supporting our colleagues as they do their best for patients and the NHS as a whole. Developing improvement skills needs to be a priority for all of us regardless of our title or position.

It is improvement skills that will navigate the NHS like a ship through a storm to a calm harbour by empowering staff to show initiative and use their skills and talents to deliver gold standard care for today’s patients and the patients of the future.

I believe that the Q community are ready and willing to meet the challenges facing the NHS and with shared skill and experience will successfully support the NHS to navigate the challenging times ahead.

What are you hoping to get out of Q?

There are amazing things happening in the NHS and every day challenges are being successfully met. I believe that by being a member of Q, I can contribute my skill set to a prestigious and worthy cause. I was looking for opportunities to collaborate with like-minded people who are keen to keep improving services and processes within the NHS and was introduced to the Q community through the Health Foundation. There are so many exciting initiatives underway and I am keen to support improvement where ever I can. I am also looking forward to learning from my fellow members as they collectively and individually hold a great deal of expertise! The Q community has such a diverse and inclusive membership it will be exciting to work with professionals from different fields to pool our expertise for ambitious projects. I have been made to feel so welcome already, particularly by welcome messages through social media. I am looking forward to building up my network of colleagues within the community. Exciting times ahead!

Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing Julia - welcome to the community! :)

  2. Guest

    Candida Perera 13 Sep 2019

    Welcome Julia, it's great to have have you as part of the community!

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