Video Interviews

My name is David Cahill, and I am currently the Assistant Director of Operations for Ealing Hospital Trust. I decided to join the NHS Gateway to Leadership Programme after seeing the initial advert. I identified that I could use my transferable skills such as my leadership and my management skills.

Before I joined the NHS, I was a Business Manager for a pharmaceutical company. Even though the pharmaceutical company obviously produces a product which has an impact on a patient’s life, it doesn’t directly affect the front line issues that patients have. You have the added advantage of not only being immersed in the day-to day job, but also having that added time and allowance to get the general strategic overview and understand and get experience of the NHS as an organisation.

The NHS Institute provides a comprehensive package of training for the Gateway to Leadership participants; you are also given the opportunity to take on an internal mentor, an external mentor and it’s been really helpful for me as my internal mentor is my CEO and I have been able to follow the board process. Even though it is there to deliver an outcome, a good outcome, it also runs like a business, and it needs to be delivering quality and efficiency. I don’t really think you need to persuade somebody to want to join the NHS Gateway to Leadership Programme. Once you read the advert and understand the comprehensive training programme that you are given over the 18 months to two years, as well as the opportunity to very quickly embed yourself into a local NHS Trust, then there’s no real persuading to be done.

My names Marie Darvill and I’m Performance and Project Manager at Portsmouth Hospitals Trust. I think the Gateway to Leadership scheme in particular is very attractive and you don’t get that many opportunities as someone with a few years experience of work and of industry, to move into something completely different.

Before I joined I started off working in advertising when I left University and I ended up working for Channel 4 and initially I went there in a kind of marketing capacity really. I am currently in a hospital trust and similarly to Channel 4, it’s a 24/7 operation but there are also some differences. You kind of feel much closer to your customers if you like working in a hospital, because you are seeing patients everyday, you are seeing them come in and use the services. There’s the obvious benefits, so you have got training, the support alongside the job and you are not just thrown in at the deep end and expected to swim.

I’ve been really lucky and I’ve been able to spend a few weeks when I first joined just going out into the organisation, meeting up with different people, spending time out in hospital, on the wards.

The other big challenge for me really is as somebody who hasn’t got a medical background, and to be honest hasn’t even got an A-level in Biology, is just understanding and getting to grips with the terminology, the acronyms and the language that people use on a daily basis.

I know it's one of David Nicholson’s, the Chief Executive, top 5 commitments as leadership and he is certainly putting his money where his mouth is, as far I am concerned, because it has been second to none and I think that’s been a really pleasant surprise really for me.

So, I think it’s a great time to be joining, and to be able to be part of those challenges and to drive through the changes that undoubtedly are going to have to happen.

My name is Naveed Mirza. I am the Service Manager for the Emergency Care Directorate in South London Health Care NHS Trust. Most of my life has generally been spent in the recruitment justice sector. To join the NHS is completely different. The NHS is a different world. It’s a micro cosmos of what public sector is all about. Not only do you have the gateway to leadership behind you, but you’ve got some really good colleagues who have become your friends and they might even have encountered something which I lean on.

Also from the networks that you make, I have met some really good people on the programme, and in the hospitals that I have worked in. Through that, I’ve managed to get myself a mentor, which has been really good. She’s a, or she was a Chief Operating Officer of an ambulance trust.

One of the career options that I wanted to do was to move my career from the primary care trust, into a hospital into an acute trust. That’s where I mentioned earlier my mentor, who was really helpful with this, by saying ‘you need to get operational management’, so one of the career options I took was to move from PCT and that’s where I got my service management role. I’ve developed skills that I’ve had before. For example, my operational management and budget management skills and people skills, further than what I’ve done before. I’m dealing with Consultants, Clinicians, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Physios – a real myriad of different kind of people. And it’s these sorts of people that are delivering high quality patient care for all our patients.

Before I joined the NHS Gateway to Leadership Programme, I was under the assumption that you go to your GP, go into your hospital, and that’s it really, but there is a lot more to it than that. There are financial implications, which as part of the Gateway to Leadership process, we are being told, and tasked with changing the process. Persuading someone to join the NHS is quite easy. I think if you are up for a challenge, and you want something difficult to do, the NHS is very easy to sell to someone.

My name is Dan Leveson. I’m Senior Commissioning Manager for Elective Care for NHS Oxfordshire.

I used to work for Oxfam as a Humanitarian Programme Manager. The real comparisons between what I do now and what I used to do, I think, are imbedded in the value sets. I think the commitment of people working in the humanitarian sector really mirrors the commitment of people working in the health professions that I have come across. They offer great training schemes, so there is a two year training scheme, there’s action learning sets as well which is a good opportunity for groups to get together and share experiences and try and learn from those. The kind of support that the Gateway offers other than the training schemes that run over the course of the two years are they help you to identify the right role for you at the very start.

I think the way that I can make a difference is by using my previous experience and experience of working under pressure, and working in the NHS I think you need to be able to work under pressure.

The thing that I was surprised about working for the NHS is the level of complexity. It’s an incredibly huge organisation, huge system and it’s really complex with relationships - political relationships from central government to local government.

Working for the NHS, you are aware you are making a difference in people’s lives. That’s something that really motivates me.