Aisha, General Management
Hello, my name is Aisha and after successfully completing my undergraduate degree in politics, I have recently started my journey on the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme (GMTS).
The GMTS is a 2-year programme designed to develop graduates into healthcare leaders, while gaining experience in both operational and strategic roles. I am honoured to have been selected to join this programme and I look forward to developing my leadership skills for the benefit of bettering our services for our patients and staff members.
As part of the GMTS, I will be starting my first placement as an Assistant Service Manager for ENT at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust. During my onboarding experience, I have had the privilege of participating in a 3-week ‘orientation’. This brilliant opportunity has allowed me to visit different departments and create new relationships to expand my understanding of how the NHS works, how our services are run and view the constant focus on the quality and safety of patient care. I was keen to create this blog to share my reflections of this experience and collate all the positive interactions I have had, over the past few weeks.
My orientation has included visiting a wide array of services, from the emergency department, acute medicine ward and shadowing surgeries, to spending a day in the command centre and observing an Executive team meeting. Comparing my experience of the NHS as a patient, as opposed to a member of staff, was truly eye-opening. I suppose, as a patient we tend to view our NHS journey in isolation, rather than observing how services run as a system, on a much wider scale. What I have found over the past few weeks, is that the NHS runs like a well-oiled machine. Clinicians, non-clinical staff, managers, porters, electricians, executives, students, volunteers all pour their efforts into working together to provide the best care for our patients. Of course, after COVID and recent challenges in staffing, there have been some difficult roads to overcome, but the feeling of togetherness and compassion I have seen across many teams in Bradford, has given me a strong sense of pride to be starting my NHS career with BTHFT.
I am excited to begin my role as the Assistant Service Manager for ENT, and continually develop my leadership skills to ensure our patients experience the best possible journey through our trust. As I visit mental health and dental community services next week, to bring a close to my orientation experience, I will consciously make an effort to be curious, keep learning and ultimately make new and meaningful relationships to strive for constant improvement of patient care.