Dr Emily Cooper

Clinical Leadership Fellow 2017 - 2018

Emily Cooper - Clinical Leadership Fellow 2017-18

Contact Details

Email: Academy@yhia.nhs.uk

Emily is a GP registrar based in York, who took a year out of programme as a Clinical Leadership Fellow at the AHSN Improvement Academy.

The Improvement Academy has traditionally focused on secondary care services, so as a primary care practitioner Emily aimed to focus on the interaction between primary, secondary and community care. She hope to be able to bring a primary care perspective to current IA projects, as well as apply IA knowledge and ideas in her future work as a General Practitioner.

Emily was involved in the Partners at Care Transitions project with the Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research team, which is looking to implement interventions to provide greater support for patients and their families when moving from hospital to home.

Emily also worked as part of the Connected Health Cities project, which links routine electronic data to improve patient care pathways across Yorkshire. Her particular role within this project involves helping to implement and evaluate a new ambulatory pathway for paediatric asthma patients in Bradford.

Emily was involved in an ongoing project looking to improve quality and safety in care homes across Yorkshire. Typically, individual care homes are isolated and QI techniques are not well utilised or understood. The aim is to work with care homes to bring about improvements in quality and safety for frail older people.

Emily shared some reflections after her year working with the Improvement Academy as a Clinical Leadership Fellow:

My year as a leadership fellow with the Improvement Academy through the Future Leaders Programme has given me the opportunity to explore healthcare from a different perspective. I have learnt so much about the structure of the NHS and commissioning, as well as being able to collaborate with local CCG’s to understand their role within the NHS. Going back into clinical practice, I now have the confidence to undertake quality improvement work within my organisation and to embed a culture of continued learning and improvement. One of my projects involved working closely with care homes to improve resident safety, and this experience has been invaluable for my work as a GP registrar, as I now understand more of the barriers and issues faced by care homes. Overall, my outlook on medicine is far more positive as a result of this year. It is inspiring to see so many people working tirelessly to improve healthcare for patients and the Improvement Academy has certainly given me a wealth of experience that will serve as a strong foundation for my future career.

During my leadership fellow year I presented posters at both the Yorkshire and Humber Quality Improvement Conference (2018) and the Future Leaders Conference (2018). I attended several workshops and courses on behaviour change and quality improvement.

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