Victoria was a specialist trainee in Renal Medicine who took a year out of programme to work as a Clinical Leadership Fellow in 2011-12.

Victoria shared some insights from her year with the Improvement Academy:

Stepping off the hamster wheel of medical registration and pursuing my interest in patient safety and leadership enabled me to really grasp the depth of perception required to view the running of a hospital as a whole, and not just from specialty field. I was afforded the opportunity to work alongside some of the most renowned patient safety researchers in the country and gain research skills, an in-depth knowledge of patient safety literature and a chance to then employ this in practice, analysing a hospital safety campaign and using this as my masters’ thesis. The leadership skills I developed and put into practice liaising with senior members of the hospital management team has given me the confidence to work as a standalone consultant in a large trust with the opportunity to develop services.