Sujo is a registrar in elderly care and general internal medicine. She was the clinical lead for the Connected Health Cities project. This work unites local health data and advanced technology to improve health services for patients in the North of England.

Sujo also worked on Safety Huddles and the Diagnostic Virtual Ward, a project at BRI looking to improve patient flow by enabling stable patients to have urgent investigations done on an inpatient timescale but as an outpatient.

Sujo shared some reflections after her year working with the Improvement Academy as a Clinical Leadership Fellow:

My out of programme year as a clinical leadership fellow allowed me some head-space, taught me more about myself and how I work with others, and greatly improved my insight into how organisations work and organisational culture.

One of my roles was to lead the evaluation of the ‘Supporting Self-Care’ project within the Healthy Ageing Collaborative over a six-month period. This experience involved working with staff from diverse backgrounds in primary care and Age UK, supervising an implementation manager within the Improvement Academy and presenting to a patient participation group. This work led to an oral presentation at the Northern Frailty Event and poster presentations at the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Annual Conference and the British Geriatrics Society Autumn Meeting.

Outside of my Improvement Academy projects, I was able to undertake courses offered by the Future Leaders Programme and explore my interest in education by working with staff at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to coordinate 19 tutorials for physician associate students. I am partway through undertaking a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, Leadership and Research which has been one of the highlights of my year and has provided me with some structure and theoretical underpinning to the practical learning from my projects. Overall, this year has been invaluable in improving my feeling of ‘readiness’ for becoming a consultant.