Medway clinicians take on national leadership roles

Two Medway clinicians have recently been appointed to national roles in NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) improvement programme.

Congratulations to Jeremy Davis, Deputy Chief Medical Officer and ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon, who has been appointed as a national GIRFT clinical lead for ENT, which he will carry out alongside his role at Medway.

Jeremy, who specialises in thyroid and parathyroid surgery, is a past president of the British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid Surgeons (BAETS) and chair of the Specialty Advisory Committee (SAC) in otolaryngology.

Together with a new national lead for paediatric ENT and two new clinical advisors, Jeremy will be working to maximise productivity in ENT services nationally, focusing on reducing the number of long waiting patients in England and developing new models of care.

Professor Tim Briggs, GIRFT chair and NHS England’s National Director for Clinical Improvement and Elective Recovery, said: “I am delighted to welcome these highly experienced clinicians to the GIRFT programme, as we focus our efforts in the ENT specialty on making sure patients are seen more quickly, and in particular on our younger patients.

“I look forward to celebrating the ongoing successes of this strengthened ENT clinical leadership team as they work to maximise productivity nationally.”

The GIRFT programme aims to improve the treatment and care of patients through in-depth review of services, benchmarking, and presenting a data-driven evidence base to support change. Clinical leads across more than 40 workstreams undertake reviews of their specialty, examining how things are currently being done and how they could be improved.

Congratulations also to Cliff Evans, Emergency Care Nurse Consultant, who was recently asked to join GIRFT’s Urgent and Emergency Care Programme as an Expert Nursing Advisor, alongside his current role.

Cliff said: “The many roles of the GIRFT team include supporting organisations experiencing significant challenges, to apply an evidence-based approach to improvement. It has been really interesting to see how challenged many organisations are, particularly at this time of the year, and it is great to be able to assist them in developing evidence-based strategies to improve conditions for patients and their teams.”