Senior leader reflections: Fiona Wyton

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

I Ieft home when I was 17 with not enough GCSEs to go on to do A levels, so I started a GNVQ at college, because I wanted to be a police officer. As well as going to college, I had several jobs to help me stay independent, one of them was working with children with behavioural and learning difficulties.?I loved the job so much, and after a couple of years, my nan pulled me aside one day and said ‘your career is destined for nursing. I can see it in the stars.?You need to give nursing a go’.?As it happened, the police were not accepting cadets at the time, but it turned out that my GNVQ and my caring work experience were enough to get me into nurse training.?So, in 1999 I started university, but I told my nan that I would give it a chance for six months.?

I remember walking onto a ward on my first clinical placement, and I just knew instantly that nursing was for me. I loved it, and I excelled at the clinical side of things, but I found the academic side challenging.?I am not sure what happened, but somehow in the second year, the academic side of my learning just clicked into place and I understood what the lecturers wanted. The next year flew by, and before I knew it, I was a qualified nurse.?It was after a while working on a medical and stroke ward at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch that I met these guardian angels called critical care outreach nurses.?They would come to the ward if we had a really poorly patient, and they were calm, clinical experts yet they didn't take over. They said ‘no, Fiona, you can do this. What do you think you need to do?’ And they would just coach and mentor me. After two years of working within medicine, I asked them ‘how can I become a nurse like you?’. They told me I had to become a critical care nurse, before I could train to be an outreach nurse.?

So that was it, my heart was set on being a critical care nurse.?It was very competitive to get into critical care nursing at the time, so I phoned every critical care unit in the region and eventually a vacancy came up.?

I spent four and half years working in critical care at Russell’s Hall Hospital and I loved it, but I noticed that the really clinically interesting patients kept going to this hospital called the Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham. So, I thought to myself, there's an opportunity maybe for me to go and learn about the tertiary specialties. So I searched for jobs again and was lucky enough to get a job at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, now known as the Heritage Building, as a staff nurse.

Fast forward 15 years; gone in the blink of an eye. I have tried to challenge myself over the years to grow and develop as a specialist?nurse, leader and now manager, as opportunities came along.?

During the first wave of the pandemic I worked as a the deputy director of nursing for critical care services and undertook clinical shifts within the critical care units across UHB. UHB has the largest single site critical care unit in the country, as well as two other critical care units at Heartlands and Good Hope hospitals. We expanded the capacity and the footprints of all the units with the support of medical/surgical/allied healthcare professionals/scientists and nursing colleagues both within UHB and the Birmingham and Solihull network. This enabled the Trust to double its critical care capacity and ensure every patient requiring a critical care admission was accommodated.?I had never seen anything like it, and?hope never to see anything like that again, but I am extremely proud and will be eternally grateful for each and every person who supported the service and Trust during the pandemic.?

By the time the second wave hit, I had taken a new opportunity as a deputy director of nursing within Division 4, supporting surgery and outpatient patient pathways across all of the UHB sites.?The second wave unlike the first, had a far greater impact on all the wards across the organisation as well as impacting on every clinical pathway.?It was extremely tough, but?one of the advantages of the size of the organisation means there’s always people around you; whether it is for advice, coaching, a safe space or a friendly face. There is no way I can’t feel connected at UHB because of the network of support.

As the vast majority of my career has been spent working in various nursing positions within the critical care services?I recognised that I could branch out into other specialities at UHB and I was ready to challenge myself differently and try something new. That is why I went to work as a deputy director of nursing for another division in the Trust, that had responsibility for different services than I was used to, as well as being across the?four hospitals, including Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull hospitals. This was a great move for me, although it was daunting at the times; stepping out of my comfort zone was a great thing for me to do, because it gave me wider experiences and opportunities to work with and support colleagues differently.

As a leader I always encourage my team, and anyone who works in UHB to try something new. To be brave and to be bold has its advantages.?I think it goes right back to the critical care outreach nurses, who I met as a newly qualified nurse. They inspired me to support and give confidence to others to try something new; that for me is why I love nursing, leadership and management, because it's about growing people.?I always ask my team the same question that I have asked myself: ‘what is stopping you?’

There are so many opportunities in nursing.?We must be one of the largest workforces in the world and it is a profession that continues to grow and develop. You can be clinical, you can be in leadership and management, you can do research, or you could be an advanced practitioner - ?the list goes on. You can be whatever you want to be!?That is?also the beauty of UHB, it’s so vast and offers so many specialities and pathways for patients that there are endless opportunities, especially for nurses.

I love my job, and I owe my amazing career to my nan.

So, what's stopping you? Join a team where the opportunities are endless. All our current jobs vacancies are on our website.