Please introduce yourself, your job title, how long you've been in your current role, and how long you've worked at HHFT?
Hi, I’m Marc Berry and I am the QI Academy Lead here at HHFT. I joined HHFT in 2014 as the acute clinical lead for Physiotherapy at Basingstoke Hospital, moving into the Improvement Team in 2017 as a Programme Manager. I have been in my current role in QI since October 2021.
How do you explain your role in the QI team to those that may be unfamiliar with Quality Improvement?
Fundamentally, my role aims to provide all staff at HHFT with the opportunities and support to develop skills to enable them to make improvements in the work they do and the care they provide. I support in developing and delivering training related to all thing’s improvement for all HHFT staff, whether that be an introduction to QI, training in QI methodology, data analysis, understanding the human side of change or learning skill to coach QI. Another part of my role is to coach those leading improvement work, as well as helping to bring people together to learn from each other, to share experiences, to join up improvement work and inspire each other to make positive changes for both our patients and our staff at HHFT.
How did you end up where you are now? What has your career journey looked like up to this point?
My career has been in many different directions over the years! I qualified as a physiotherapist in 2006 from the University of Brighton. I began my career at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, specialising in Critical Care Physiotherapy in 2010. It was here I became interested in service improvement, QI (I didn’t know it was called that at the time!), and research. I had the opportunity to explore this further during my NIHR Research Fellowship, where I researched non-invasive lung imaging for ventilated patients. This led to further research work around physiotherapy in Critical Care, as well as opportunities to be involved in research looking alternative treatments for sleep apnoea.
I returned to clinical practice in 2014, which is when I joined HHFT as a physiotherapy clinical lead for Acute Care. I was then lucky enough to have a Heath Education England QI Fellowship for a year, which focused on a project looking at acute therapies supporting discharge from ED. This really sparked my interest in QI work, which led me to join the HHFT Transformation team as a programme manager in 2017, supporting both inpatient and outpatient improvement programmes, and finally to my current role in the HHFT QI Academy.
What have been a highlight for you at work recently?
There have plenty of highlights recently but these two have given me particular joy:
- Learning new skills in looking at, presenting, and interpreting data. Recently I have had the opportunity to work with some amazing people in the world of data who have really shown me the power of data in telling compelling improvement stories. Despite having always been a data geek, this has got me excited (some might say disproportionately so!) for looking at and supporting others to look at their data to tell their story.
- Having some time working back in critical care. It is always wonderful to work with the team on critical care at Basingstoke and to spend time caring for patients. It’s a place I love to work and always jump at the chance get back in there when the opportunities arise!
What would you say to someone who was curious about Quality Improvement and how the tools/methodology could help them in their roles, but were unsure of where to start?
Embrace that curiosity! Start to think about where there are opportunities to make positive changes, or where there are opportunities to do more of the good stuff. Talk to your colleagues about where they see opportunities; you often find that by asking these questions, your colleagues are wanting similar things. If you’re not sure where to start, come and have a chat with us in the QI team or with one of the many QI coaches and practitioners across the Trust. We can give you pointers on where to start with your work and what tools may be useful for you, and if we don’t know, then we’ll know who the right people with the right skills are to advise you. The main thing to do is to begin and see where it takes you!
