I have been an OD and Leadership consultant with the Health and Social Care (HSC) Leadership Centre for the past 18 years. Our clients are all HSC organisations in Northern Ireland. Before joining Health, I had a senior training and quality role with a major Japanese manufacturer where I was involved in applying Lean methodologies to improve quality.
 
I have always had a strong interest in improvement and am formally trained in Lean to Green belt level. Since moving to the Leadership Centre, I have led a team that has supported our clients in applying a range of improvement methodologies in over 60 significant projects across acute, primary and social care services and a variety of support services. All of these projects aim to involve frontline staff in delivering positive, measurable changes which benefit service users and which increase the efficiency of service delivery.
 
I have also worked with senior teams in HSC organisations to develop their approach to Quality Improvement and to build their internal QI capacity. All of our leadership programmes include modules on QI and I have been involved in developing and delivering standalone QI short courses and programmes, including one accredited at ILM level 5. We aim to align our programmes and consultancy work to the four levels of the Northern Ireland Quality Attributes Framework. An overview of our portfolio is available here. I was involved as part of the Leadership Centre team in establishing the HSC Knowledge Exchange, which is an online community aimed at connecting people to improve health and social care in Northern Ireland.
 
 
 
In the past year I have worked with Simon Dodds, MA, MS, FRCS, SAASoft, to pilot the application of Health Care Systems Engineering. I have completed online modules in the Foundations of Improvement Science in Healthcare (FISH) and am currently pursing accreditation as an Improvement Science Practitioner level 1. This will help me to support clients to develop their capability in making improvements by design in scheduled and unscheduled care services.
 
 
I am the only registered Investors in People Practitioner in Health and Social Care. This is very helpful in using the IIP standard to provide an overall OD context for improving quality through developing cultures and practices that make improvement a part of everyone’s daily work.