What is your current role and what other roles have you held within the Trust?
I am Clinical Director for Adult and Older Adult Mental Health Services in City & Hackney. I am also a Consultant Psychiatrist working in an Early Detection of Psychosis team. And of course I'm a QI coach in training, graduating in a few months.

What is the role of a QI coach?
A QI coach is there to support a team leading a QI project. Their aim is to maximise the potential for improvement and learning during the life of a project. Some of it is practical support to help the team use all the relevant QI tools and resources available. But most importantly, it is to make sure the team finds and implements the best ideas to address the complex problem they are tackling.

What do you think the QI process brings to the work of the Trust?
It brings a robust and tested method to support teams improving the care they deliver to the communities we serve. It also sends a strong and clear signal that people who want to improve their service will be supported and provided with the best tools and resources to achieve their aim.

How has QI helped you?
It has given me a range of methods and ways of thinking to improve. These can be used in a wider context than QI projects, they can be implemented every day. It has also helped me really realise how true it is that service users, carers and front line clinicians have the best change ideas.

What do you think the next 10 years of QI will bring?
I think it will become even more embedded in our systems and ways of working, in our culture as a Trust.

Which project are you most proud of and why?
I am chairing the QI forum in City & Hackney, and we recently heard about a project our Home Treatment Team has led over the past year. Their aim was to reduce delayed discharges. The have made incredible progress, with a sustained and marked improvement. QI work is often messy, it's never as neat as you hope it will be when you start. But QI really helped the team strengthen their processes and develop and implement change ideas to make a difference. It was beautiful to hear!