Senior leader reflections: Jo Gray

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

Like so many nurses, I can’t remember ever making the conscious decision to become a nurse; it was just always there in the back of my head growing up, and as a teenager I remember writing to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital asking how I could start as a nurse.

The hospital kindly wrote back to me all those years ago, and so my career started with general training in 1987; this was before nurses had to specialise in adult or child nursing. I started on Ward East 1A in general medicine, qualifying in late 1990, and I simply loved it.

Back then there were staffing pressures too (as the whole system is very familiar with now), but I had (and still do) have phenomenally strong role models who didn’t just manage, they led; with confidence and competence. They taught me the importance of the fine balance required to run a thriving ward, and with that comes the central role everyone had to play on the team.

Within 18 months I went from a staff nurse, to a senior staff nurse, and I remember my first shift that I was in charge of the whole ward for the first time on a night shift, just me and one other qualified nurse, with very few other colleagues on in the hospital; the experience felt very big and magnified. In the moment you got on with it; you had the medical division bleep, you covered any cardiac arrests and attended them all, we have (and still do) have such amazing teams and people around us who come together at the right time, each time.

I’ve always been at the QE, the hospital has afforded me so many opportunities that I have never felt the need to leave it. At the heart of it, I always loved being in medicine. I worked for some time in liver medicine, liver surgery, and in intensive care, but it was always general medicine I loved, and I stayed in that for 16 years, becoming a sister.

So much has changed since the earlier parts of my career; health authorities and departments have shifted and changed; the Trust has grown and evolved in that time, I have gained so many skills too, but I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.

It was a fellow nurse and friend who made me aware of opportunities in research and development (R&D) and I took some very small steps into that world when there were only really a small handful of nurses working in it at the QE, but it offered a unique perspective.

Going from caring for patients on the wards with conditions for which there was no further standard of care or treatment that we could offer, where there was nothing more we could do; we would be heartbroken. To very quickly being part of teams to deliver clinical trials where we could now treat some of these patients and allow them to have more comfortable, active, happy and healthy years; wasn’t just fascinating, it demonstrated the incredible hope the role of nursing in R&D can provide.

While it is not always possible (and may never be), to deliver transformational treatments for all conditions, I found my true home in research, in being a strong advocate for patients at what are very vulnerable moments in their lives, where often, there was nowhere else to turn but to a treatment that may be experimental, but which offers the only remaining hope.

COVID-19 saw some of that hope impacted, the whole of R&D had to transform overnight, I remember crying and thinking that this is it. Research nurses went to wards, to bereavement care - to various teams; some could not because they had their own health concerns. Others helped coordinate the fight against the pandemic, we delivered antibody testing, saliva testing, but our very DNA was to pivot; to innovate - and we did. We kept R&D going as far as possible, using our infrastructure, skill and experience, we opened and closed trials to support the fight against COVID-19 within literally hours at the same time that many of us were on the ‘front line’ in critical care too, treating the very sickest.

This change saw many of our trials paused, but we reopened R&D fairly quickly, but for a while it was not the R&D as we knew it, and that was difficult for all of us in the team.

This was our most challenging period, and as a leader during that time, it cannot be underestimated how deeply impactful the (necessary) upheaval was, but it did prove the immense resilience and brilliance of research nurses. I’m very proud of my teams and everything we were able to deliver, even though it was hard.

In many senses it reinvigorated, upskilling and reskilling clinical and nursing practise, and it offered us great insights in both frontline and research worlds, the latter world being seen or misunderstood sometimes as ‘distant’, but we’re always there in the best interests of the patient.

It does feel like a privilege to get to see both perspectives, having being on the ground on medical wards for so long and very much delivering the highly skilled but caring and nurturing side of the ‘traditional’ nursing role, but to also lead on the progressive and developmental side of nursing, where there is a deep desire to innovate treatments, interventions or pathways.

As the Head of R&D Operations, being a ‘senior manager’ in my mind is not to ‘manage’, but to lead others to become leaders too, as what I really love to see is my team growing, learning, developing new skills, reflecting on experiences, and that is what I can do for them in my role. Growing a team is not just pulling people together to deliver x, y or z, it is about learning and evolving together.

I see ‘kind’ as our most important value, because what do you have otherwise? I don’t feel that it is always important to see it in grand gestures; I see it in all the little things that are the sum of the whole: the unexpected cup of tea, the quick hellos and quick corridor catch ups to check all is OK, the making time – or making space, when things are tough or tricky, it’s the daily check in.?

Jo Gray is the Head of R&D Operations at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. On Friday 19 May, to mark International Clinical Trials Day and de-mystify research for the public and NHS colleagues, Jo’s team is bringing back the highly anticipated UHB Research Showcase which puts a spotlight on the latest R&D developments from across the Trust’s four hospitals in Birmingham and Solihull. For more details visit:?