Senior leader reflections: David Byrne

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust runs Good Hope, Heartlands, Queen Elizabeth and Solihull hospitals.

I trained as physiotherapist, and I worked as a physio for several years. When I qualified, physiotherapy posts were hard to come by, so you had to go where the work was.?I worked around the north of England and South Wales for a while after I qualified.

I am from Lichfield originally, so I eventually came back to the Midlands as I wanted to go somewhere different. I joined a locum agency and my first placement was at the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital. However, as I was a locum and I was looking for something more secure, I moved to a permanent role in the intermediate care team, providing short-term nursing and therapy intervention at home during episodes of illness.

The team was still under the umbrella of Solihull Care Trust (which would later merge with Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust).

I did some work around how intermediate care in the community could support patients to be discharged into the community. So it was a kind of like wraparound services, similar to Supported Integrated Discharge, meaning patients are identified on wards before discharge, and they are supported at home with appropriate therapy. We had no funding for it, so it was all done on a wing and a prayer – fitting the patient support around existing capacity. The following winter, I was asked to do the same again and we had support from district nurses.

Eventually we had a properly supported team of therapists whose remit was to support patients at home with therapy. This was a real career changing moment for me, and I remember walking into the office one day, and there was a whiteboard full of patients’ names that we were discharging that day and a group of professionals working to make this happen.?

I focused my energies on developing my skills; I did informal mentoring and volunteered myself for service development work

As a physio, I could only see the patient in front of me and could only make a difference to that patient in front of me at that time. By getting involved in service development or management roles, I could have a much wider influence and, hopefully, a positive one.

So I focused my energies on developing my skills; I did informal mentoring and volunteered myself for service development work. I moved into operational management with my first role in respiratory medicine. I soon moved into cardiac surgery, cardiology and vascular surgery at the QE. I was then appointed to my current role in April 2020. On reflection, it seems like a mad time to start a job! I had some pretty big operational issues to deal with in the first few weeks and I had to take it all in my stride. There isn’t really an instruction manual that comes with this job, so you just kind of go, okay, let's work out what we can do about that.

When I was a physiotherapist, the area that always interested me was stroke rehabilitation. I realised fairly early on that the challenge in physiotherapy was not necessarily knowing the right exercises to give a patient, it was about how you convince them to do the exercises. So I kind of always enjoyed that sort of environment where you get to build a relationship with the patient. This is why I enjoy this role so much. Ours is one of the only clinical divisions that touches every patient that comes into this organisation - whether that be through radiology, laboratories or pharmacy - we have the ability to have an impact on their care. That gives me a huge sense of responsibility of what our place in the organisation is, and how important the work that we do is.

For me, it's the people that you work with who make the job interesting. The two most rewarding parts of my job are the regular contact with my staff groups, and watching them develop and supporting them to develop.

I get involved in reciprocal mentoring and with bringing graduate scheme students into the division. I also chair the operational managers’ forum and all of these are really important to me.

The two most rewarding parts of my job are the regular contact with my staff groups, and watching them develop and supporting them to develop

One of my team’s proudest achievements was setting up rapid COVID-19 testing in the emergency departments. We were able to do, within a matter of weeks, what would normally have taken months to set up. We were able to carry out around 500 tests per days across our three emergency departments each day and getting test results within 20-30 minutes.

I genuinely love my job and it challenges me every day. I take the time to be kind to my team as I know that a simple gesture of kindness, such as a coffee left on my desk for me, can make such a big difference. I believe that small acts of kindness have a longer-term impact than big gestures.

I build time in to spend time with my direct reports, and we spend that time not talking about work, I just ask them how they are and what they are up to in their lives.

Sometimes it's just nice to know that somebody else is going through that the same challenges

Since starting in this role two years ago, I have worked closely with not only my counterparts in other divisions, I have also worked with other NHS organisations. Being connected with my colleagues is really important to ensure that we are working together to see patients in a timely way. It helps me to see the bigger picture outside of my division; we've all got the same pressures and the same frustrations. Sometimes it's just nice to know that somebody else is going through that the same challenges, let alone all of the practical help and knowledge that we build from doing that kind of work.

My advice to anyone looking to move into a leadership role is to be resilient, but also focus on, and understand, your own resilience. It’s important to be able to understand when you're not yourself, or when you're under pressure, and how that feels. This will help you to be able to recognise what you need to do to get yourself into a better place. Spending time with my family and running at least once a week helps me to decompress. It’s all about balance.

Be resilient, but also focus on, and understand, your own resilience

I have a really strong belief that if you focus on the people, and the process, everything else follows. So if you've got a group of really knowledgeable, really engaged people working around you,?everything else will fit in to place. Remember though, there will always be things that are outside of your control! And that’s the fun of it!

If you’d like to join our management team, we are looking for an experienced and passionate General Manager to join the management team within the lower GI surgery speciality. Find out more via the link below: