Affra Al Shamsi (She/Her)
Assistant Director of Transformation and Improvement
North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust
England - EastEngland - East Midlands
Biography
I am the Assistant Director of Transformation and Improvement at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust and am passionate about improving the NHS for patients and staff. I am also keen on creating psychologically safe environments, connecting siloes & celebrating what every individual brings to the table. I am a multidisciplinary person with experience in Innovation, strategic partnership, Anchor organisations, research, transformation, and QI, among other things. I have experience working within the NHS and other healthcare settings across the world, for example, in The Middle East, America, and within different areas within the UK, such as Sheffield, Kent, Dorset, and Cambridgeshire. I focused on public engagement and co-design, innovation and connecting silos, collaboration and partnership and knowledge mobilisation between individuals, departments and teams and across organisations. When I worked in Kent during covid, I was part of Medway Innovation Institute, Then worked on designing integrated services across Dorset. I worked in QI, Improvement, service redesign, transformation, digital solution and infrastructure design, innovation, etc, throughout my career but it was my main focus in the past 6 years. I have worked in knowledge services in healthcare for over 16 years, where I was involved in innovation, public engagement and co-design, service redesign, transformation and improvement and in creating opportunities for collaborative work. Before joining the NHS, I did my PhD in Sheffield, which focused on understanding the factors that affect knowledge sharing, communication, and teamwork in healthcare cross-professional teams.
I am a multidisciplinary professional passionate about Innovation, strategic partnership, Transformation, Quality Improvement, Knowledge Mobilization (KMb), and evidence-based decision-making. I am a QSIR practitioner, QI, and KMb coach. I have worked to support the creation of Medway Innovation Institute to help professionals identify, carry out, and implement QI projects. One of my favourite projects is marrying KMb, and QI processes to deliver the best results.
Personally, I like to challenge myself. I enjoy running and have completed several races over the last few years. I also like going for long walks and finding new places to enjoy, sketching and drawing, and mushroom spotting!
Q Exchange ideas
Dorset Knowledge & Intelligence Exchange
We propose creating a multi-modal, searchable, peer-reviewed platform allowing Dorset NHS organisations to exchange knowledge, learning and information. A ‘one-stop-shop, to exchange knowledge and intelligence, enabling learning alignment and standardisation.
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External links
Areas of interest
- Access
- Acute care
- Analytics and data
- Children and young people
- Collaboration and networking
- Commissioning
- Community and voluntary
- Digital technology
- Disability
- Efficiency and productivity
- Emergency medicine
- Funding and sustainability
- Improvement research
- Inequalities
- Integrated care
- Leadership
- Long-term conditions
- Mental health
- Older people
- Patient and public involvement
- Patient experience
- Patient safety
- Person-centred care
- Policy
- Primary care
- Public health
- Quality improvement
- Quality of care
- Social care
- Wider determinants of health
- Workforce
Groups
- Staff Experience Improvement Group
- Professional Advocacy
- Adoption and Spread Collective
- Improvement Culture Club
- Videos & Podcasts
- Videos & Podcasts
- Creating collective responsibility to reduce delays in elective pathways
- Philosophy and ethics for health care improvement
- Impact and power of storytelling in health
- Quality Management in Healthcare
- Tools and resources to help support Networks and Network leaders
- Psychological Safety in Health and Social Care
- Technology-enabled remote monitoring
- QI Communications
- Coaching Improvement
- Service Design
- Evidence 4 Quality Improvement
- Network Weaving learning series
- Network Weaving
- Culture of Continuous Improvement
- Network mapping
- Improving Improvement (Q Exchange project)
- Q Improvement Framework Resources
- Psychology for Improvement
- Technology to support QI Teams
- Building improvement capability across boundaries
- Mindfulness for Quality Improvement
- Improvement Capability framework project
- Sustainable Healthcare
- South West Q
- Sketchnote
- Liberating Structures in healthcare
- Applying behavioural insights in healthcare
- Improving Joy in Work
- Q in the North West Coast
- Closing the gap: developing improvers for a complex world
- Measurement for Improvement
- Reducing Diagnostic Errors
- Organisational Resilience & Safety-II
- Making use of patient experience
- Human Factors
- Human-Centred Design in Health and Care
- Digital
- Bridging Networks
- Q Reading Club
- Reimagining Health and Care
- Process Visualisation in the NHS
- PPI and Diversity
- Improvement Research Network
- Learning from Excellence
- Q Lab – peer support group
- Quality Improvement and the wellbeing of the workforce
- Evaluation
- Communities of Practice
- West of England
- Q Connectors
- Complexity Approaches to support Quality Improvement