Emma Smith - Chief Clinical Officer

What led you to join NPC?

Prior to joining what was then NNPC in 2020, I had worked in Primary Care as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) and Nurse Team manager for just over 10 years - and before that I had been at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital for nearly 19 years. So I was more than ready for a new challenge!

When I joined, we had significantly less commissioned services than we do now and we were a relatively small core team. I started as the Clinical Quality Nurse Lead, a new role for NPC, which enabled me to establish a strong foundation in the development of the organisational clinical governance frameworks, with a core focus on patient safety and quality – amongst doing whatever we as a team needed to do to support the delivery of services.

Being an ANP, I worked in some of our member Practices to support shortfalls in staffing. Bearing in mind that this was when Covid was still a new phenomenon, I had plenty to do!

How has your role evolved since you first joined?

Joining during the Covid pandemic meant that the focus of my initial work, alongside establishing organisational clinical governance frameworks, was to work with the Enhanced Care Home Team on the ground-breaking work they did to instigate, carry out, and evaluate the swab testing of care home patients for Covid-19.?

I coordinated data for the outcomes of the testing and the symptoms patients experienced - the resulting paper was one of the first to be published on this work, and led the way for national care home testing strategies moving forward, which was a great outcome.

Fast forward to April 2022, I became a director of NNPC and at that time transitioned into the role of the Director of Clinical Services & Quality. This role was a new expansion to the Senior Management Team, and came as a result of organisational growth and the need for someone with my background to complement the already well established (and brilliant!) Senior Management Team.?

Following our shift to become a CIC earlier this year, our internal structures were reviewed in light of our continual growth and I am now in the role of the Chief Clinical Officer at NPC.

What does this role entail, and how does this support the organisation ?

The role, in summary, provides direction and leadership on all aspects of NPC’s clinical services, specifically in relation to the delivery of high standards in patient safety and quality for compliance with regulatory standards. This is fundamental in the contribution to our organisational reputation for excellence in patient care.

My role also encompasses clinical leadership, working closely with Dr. Linda Hunter, our Medical Director, to the multi-profession clinical staff we employ. In a nutshell, my focus is to improve and promote clinical outcomes, enhance value, and minimise patient harm whilst ensuring that high-quality patient care is being delivered.

It is vital that this is done in a collaborative approach with the other members of EMT, and the wider team, to ensure that all aspects of high quality, safe clinical service delivery are met.

A great example of NPC working towards improving and delivering high quality clinical services is our recent development in training and education, and we are now an NHS England approved Learning Organisation.?This enables us to offer GP trainees support in their training and is alongside offering medical students placements in some of our services.

Our first GP trainee started at our General Practice at the Front Door (GPFD) Service at the James Paget Hospital in August 2024. This is soon to be followed by the GPFD Service at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which will be coming in early 2025. Not only is it important for us as an organisation to instil learning and education in all of our services, but it is also great that we can be part of forming some sustainability in the future of the Primary Care workforce. We are well placed to offer training, as we have hosted student doctors in our GPFD Services for a couple of years.

This month, we have welcomed two UEA Pharmacist students in their final year placement into our Home Visiting service, which will support their quality improvement project. Again, this is a great way to support and educate our future workforce, as well as supporting us in developing services that better serve our patients.

What makes you proud to work at NPC?

NPC culture has always embraced learning and education, and it is fundamental to the high quality services we deliver. Our Annual Quality Account 2023-24 does a great job of outlining what we do and how we do it - if you are interested in finding out more, you can read on here: https://online.flippingbook.com/view/543798591/

I feel very lucky, privileged, and proud to work with the wonderful, dedicated NPC team, who are fundamental in the strategic direction and vision of what we would like to support & achieve for General Practice across Norfolk & Waveney – with, of course, the patient at the heart of how, why, and what we do.?

We believe that bringing access to healthcare into our local communities, at scale, is essential in delivering services to patients where they need them, and will support general practice to achieve better outcomes of care for their patient groups. We work towards the goal of the development of Primary Care services which enable ease of access to healthcare support, at the right time, the right place, and targeted to what is needed. Now that we are a CIC, it is hoped that we are best placed to fulfil this goal.

We know that prevention is the key to supporting better outcomes for any aspect of life, and healthcare is not the exception. What we strive to do is to meet the patients needs where they are in their communities - enabling them to see a healthcare professional when they need to, in either a preventative or treatment scenario. We know that this dramatically improves patient outcomes - as well as reduces load on secondary care institutions. Often patients end up in the hospital environment to seek treatment, and it is not always the most appropriate place to be treated. We know that for elderly and frail patients in particular, care delivered in other settings can improve outcomes.

We feel that the patient voice is important in everything we do, and we actively seek patient feedback from all of our services to help us learn, improve, and develop them to meet their needs. Equally, we listen to the staff who deliver the services and always try to learn and respond to their voice and opinions on how we can improve the support we give them to deliver our services. We have fantastic responses to our patient & staff surveys, and the absolute majority is very positive but we also recognise that we don’t always get things 100% right for everyone but we are responsive to that and would always address any issues in a way which improves and learn from those opinions.