John was a Clinical Leadership Fellow in 2012-13. He is now a Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

John shared some insights from his year with the Improvement Academy:

During my year as a patient safety leadership fellow (PSLF) at Bradford, I was involved in a multitude of projects and topics, including research into mobile device use, designing and commissioning a healthcare app, improvement, human factors, change management, organising conferences, recruiting, conducting Trust-wide audit into safe practices. I gained insight into and was involved with Trust organisation at all levels up to and including the executive. I gained an in-depth and wide ranging of knowledge of patient safety issues common to secondary care environments in the developed world.

The PSLF has enabled me to complement this learning with opportunities to explore the psychological, human and organisational factors which influence staff and impact on patient safety issues and efforts to report and eliminate them. These insights into human factors, behaviour change and improvement science, when combined with the development of leadership skills, have given me a powerful skill set which will allow me to improve service and safety and drive change as a medical professional. The NHS and obstetrics & gynaecology, face unprecedented challenges due to increasing demand, reduced funds and changing workforce structure. On-going provision of quality, safe and affordable healthcare depends on an appreciation of these problems and the means to overcome them.

I therefore believe that the PSLF at Bradford has prepared me for my current consultant role, in a way current specialty training could not and would therefore commend the PSLF to all trainees as an important opportunity to gain useful out of programme experience (OOPE).