What is your name? Amy Gaskin-Williams
What is your role? Involvement and Experience Manager
Why did you choose to work in the NHS? I was previously working for Care Opinion, supporting (or more accurately, imploring) mental health Trusts to listen to feedback and stories from their patients, families and carers. I got to know (and love) Notts Healthcare, and was desperate to join the team who were already nationally renowned for being talented, highly motivated and brave in the way they lead their organisation to listen to, publish and act on feedback. I’m also very inspired and proud to be even the tiniest cog in the magnificent machine that is the NHS. All these people doing all these incredible things every day to help, heal and save people … how could you not be?
Describe what you do in 100 words or less – I’m one of the team that designs, manages and improves the way our organisation seeks feedback, analyses and shares it, responds to it and does a better job of caring for people because of it. I’m also part of the team of people who recruit and support volunteers. I spend maybe half of my time doing, a quarter of my time thinking (designing/planning) and a quarter of my time managing/supporting our team.
What do you enjoy most about your role? I sincerely enjoy hearing people’s feedback, and when our staff respond honestly and humbly, and they say what they’ll do – and you know they’re the kind of person who will do as they say they will – that is just brilliant. Sometimes, you see a dialogue between a patient and a member of staff and you feel completely reinvigorated by it – by how simple they make it look, by how respectful they are of each other’s positions and by how much they’re both striving for the same thing. That’s enough to keep me going for the rest of the year! I also love that I’m part of the team that lays bare the things our organisation gets right and gets wrong. I love the candour of patient feedback. It’s warts and all, and I think that’s great. If our services can be brave enough to welcome feedback and not be defensive when it then arrives in all its glory, I think we’re well on the way to delivering top-notch healthcare.
What three words would you use to describe the NHS? Awe-inspiring, underfunded.
If you could give the NHS any 70th birthday present what would it be? More money! I just can’t fathom how we are staring gloomily into a future where the NHS most likely won’t exist. I would also like to give the NHS a beautifully wrapped box of genius tech bods who could transform how we use our smart phones/personal hardware to care for ourselves, measure and report our symptoms, manage appointments and results, provide feedback and goodness knows what else. We need people with fast-firing minds, quirky ideas and a refreshing lack of cynicism to turn NHS IT on its head.
What advice would you give to someone who was thinking about working at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust? Don’t even hesitate.
Follow our countdown to the NHS’s 70th birthday as we post a blog a day.