Senior leader reflections: Su Dorrian

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

I'm a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and I've worked at the Trust for 11 years. I am also the Divisional Education Lead; this is a new role that sits between the service management structure and the postgraduate medical education team, and my job is to support the learning environment for clinicians throughout the division. There isn’t really a typical day for me at work, I spend about 50% of my time working shifts in the emergency departments (EDs) at Heartlands and Good Hope hospitals – these might be day shifts or lates and on-calls. Within our department we are using self-rostering to allow everyone on the team to choose shifts that work with their other commitments. My non-clinical work is very varied and usually involves face-to-face and virtual meetings, project and admin work, telephone calls and working on any of our Trust sites. I’ve got a four-year-old at home, along with a husband who is partly self-employed, so we have to plan and be flexible with childcare and family life to be able to have the careers that we enjoy too.

I have also been the clinical lead for emergency medicine and I'm the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) Chair for the West Midlands. This means that I represent the West Midlands at a national level on college committees and I am also improving engagement in national work of emergency medicine from consultants and associate specialist colleagues, advanced clinical practitioners (ACPs), postgraduate doctors in training, and locally employed doctors working in emergency medicine in the West Midlands.

I am also currently doing the Leader Plus Fellowship, which is funded by the RCEM. This is a leadership career development programme for NHS leaders with small children. UHB has been very supportive in me doing the course, and it’s been really valuable, giving me time to focus on me and my career and family life aspirations, as a working parent to a young child.?

When I look back, I definitely didn't want to be a doctor as a child. I remember loving watching murder mysteries on TV and wanting to either become a detective or wanting to be a lawyer, or a barrister in criminal court. But somehow, between doing my GCSEs and working in the Bank of England, I chose to do my A-Levels in biology, chemistry, maths and psychology.?So, not the sort of thing that would get you on to a law degree!?By that point in time I'd made my mind up that I wanted to do something in healthcare, and I started to think about doing medicine. So, I went to the University of Birmingham to study medicine and have stayed in and around the West Midlands ever since.

I started with a House Officer job, as it was at the time, in healthcare of older people at Solihull Hospital. I worked in general surgery and ED at Heartlands Hospital for my first year. And then after that I knew that I really wanted to do either emergency medicine or acute medicine. So I went to Wolverhampton, where I spent the next six years doing a medical rotation and anaesthetics and ITU, before finally going to work as a middle grade in the emergency department. At which point in time I applied for, and was successful in getting, registrar training in the West Midlands.?

Being a leader is often about leading by example, and I think being a good listener also really helps. I work really hard to take time out to listen to what people have to say. This is where our Trust value of kindness comes in. Kindness translates across everything we do, it helps us to connect with colleagues and patients, and we're being bold and innovative. I work hard to take the rest of the team with me whenever I am getting involved in making a change, or taking a bold new approach to something. For lots of people, change can be quite frightening. It sounds crazy working in emergency medicine, but I find uncertainty actually quite difficult. I am someone who likes consistency and isn't particularly comfortable with change.

When ten doctors, who I'd been involved in training as a consultant, joined the team themselves as consultants, seeing their career progression and seeing them get to where it was they wanted to be was great for me. I got a lot of energy from knowing that I had assisted them in a small way to get there.

If you are inspired by Su's leadership journey and would like to join our team, you can find all our current vacancies on our website: