I am extremely grateful to the Florence Nightingale Foundation for awarding me a Leadership scholarship that has offered the most vibrant leadership development opportunity. I would like to thank Professor Elizabeth Robb for her immense support every step of the way and to Sue Machel for her superb coaching in the initial part of the programme that positively influenced and helped shape its direction.
My sincere gratitude to my mentor, Professor Trish Morris-Thompson who offered me expert mentorship advice that kept me focused and provided opportunities for feedback, and to escalate any issues.
I would like to thank the Chief Nurse Office and the Women’s Services Directorate at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust for its sponsorship, support and encouragement.
My special thanks go to Sue Neville, who has an incredible ability to make every single one of the scholars feel so special and supported me through my journey. She was always available to listen and help if any uncertainties arose.
I was at a point in my professional NHS career that I lacked confidence in my ability to engage locally and nationally in order to influence a solid framework for strategic business planning. I was also aware that delivering a compassionate care particularly in the aftermath of Francis enquiry imposed a huge leadership challenge in the NHS and was keen to learn how to influence the status quo and progress in my career. This was considering the impact that maternity services has on health of future generations and the challenges of improving women’s experience of maternity services under financial pressures. I recognised that managing healthcare under scarce resources had changed the expectation of current leadership styles, in fast moving, successful organisations as well as those in need of urgent remedies to meet the basic standards.
Embracing the value of lifelong learning, I decided to consider a leadership scholarship through Florence Nightingale Foundation. The unique design of this scholarship facilitated a learning environment through attending lectures, a variety of conferences, opportunities to work with a mentor, being coached and learn from many networking opportunities. The most exciting part of the scholarship was to model the best and consolidate the learning through job shadowing and working alongside influential leaders in the NHS.
The aim of this report is to describe the various stages of the programme and how they helped me achieve the objectives in my learning contract which was drawn from a personal assessment at the start. The opportunity to test out unique set of leadership skills along side eighteen leaders from four corners of the nation with various leadership backgrounds was a surreal experience. I am forever indebted to the Foundation for introducing me to an amazing group of people each with incredible amount of experience in both their personal and professional lives. The life long learning achieved throughout the process both professionally and personally far exceeded my expectation.