Ali Cracknell is a Consultant in Medicine for Older People and Associate Medical Director for Quality Improvement at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and Clinical Lead for the Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Collaborative. She has a passion for patient safety, using data for improvement, and implementing innovations into frontline clinical practice.

Ali led the Health Foundation Scaling up Improvement Grant: ‘Huddle Up for Safer Healthcare’, working with over 150 frontline teams, across three NHS Trusts to combine a huddle with the aim of improving patient safety and team working. As part of her work with the safety huddles, Ali and her team in collaboration with the Improvement Academy won the HSJ Value Awards 2018 Patient Safety category for Enhancing value through increasing patient safety and reducing litigation. She has worked over recent years on successful frontline QI projects including reducing harm from misplaced nasogastric feeding tubes, reducing falls and reducing cardiac arrests.

In 2014 Ali was named as one of the HSJ Top Innovators in Healthcare. Ali is an active researcher within patient safety and Leeds Teaching Hospitals is one of the 5 NHS Trusts in the UK to be working with the Virginia Mason Institute over a 5 year period. Ali and her colleague were also runners up in the Sir Peter Carr Award 2017– Using Data for Improvement: ward to board.