Specialty Manager

Introduction

Hi, everyone. So my name is Holly. I am 37 years old and I first joined the NHS after I had my daughter in 2011. So I was 26 at the time. I wanted to talk about my level of education on leaving college, just to put it out to everyone that I chose not to go to university because at the time I didn't know what I wanted to do, which I think is quite common for people of that age. I didn't want to waste money and time doing a course that I probably wouldn't use. So I just decided after my levels to go straight into working. I was living on my own as well at the time, so I needed an income. I started off in the motor trade, which I had no interest in whatsoever. I don't even like cars, so it was just a job because it was full-time and it gave me the money that I needed. I then went on maternity leave and decided that I didn't want to go back to work full-time, which was what that role was offering me. I couldn't go back to it part-time.

So that was the time when I decided that I wanted to look around for a different job. My experience at the time was obviously my GCSEs, my A levels and then my administrative experience I had from the motor trade. But I got talking with my health visitor at the time just about I didn't want to work full time and what opportunities I could possibly go into. And she was the one who said, have you had a look on the NHS Jobs website, which I didn't even know existed at the time because I wasn't in that field. So I had a look on there and actually saw loads of different roles that I could apply for. But one, in particular, stood out to me, probably because I had a baby at the time as well and it was a newborn hearing screening administrator. So I went for the job and I got it. I then started working part-time for the newborn hearing screening team, which I absolutely loved. We're a really small team and my manager at the time, I think I'd only been there about eight months, said, “Holly, we think you'd be great. Do you want to do your screening certificate to actually then become clinical?” So I did it! At the time, I was just taught by my manager on-the-job training and I had to go to London for a day to do what they call an OSCE. Which is an observed structured clinical examination, just for one day to demonstrate what I understood of the screening. And it was a bit of role-play just doing the actual screen on a doll, which I passed and then started screening in the NICU three times a week. And part of my role as well as to go out into the community and observe the health visitors doing the initial screening, to make sure their competencies were up to scratch and that they were keeping their skills up. I absolutely loved that job. But it was unfortunately the program changed and we became a seven-day-a-week service which didn't fit with my lifestyle. I didn't want to work weekends having a young child, so I decided at that time that it was probably time for me to make a bit of a change. And my manager at the time supported me in that change.

And she said there was a role available in Audiology, which is similar, it's all about hearing, but it was for older children rather than babies. This time I was a bit dubious about it because it was an admin manager for that service and I had never done any management before. But they were a really small team and during my interview, they said that they could offer me some manager training by way of an apprenticeship, a level three, which is the equivalent to an A-level standard. So I decided to take the jump and go and be the admin manager of Paediatric Audiology, literally as soon as I started, I also commenced the apprenticeship. So I was working four days a week. I did the apprentice one day a week, not in my own time, but in my work time, I was still being paid a full-time wage. They just allowed me 20% of my hours to be able to do the apprenticeship, which massively helped with my managerial skills and knowledge, because I didn't have any. It was just amazing to be able to still work, get that wage, but learn at the same time and give me a new skill set.

I then carried that forward into the NHS as the admin manager for Diabetes endocrinology. I spent 18 months there. During that time, I did a lot of shadowing with my manager, who was a band seven speciality manager, and that shadowing, her encouragement and my work ethic enabled me to then move into the role that I'm doing now, which is a band six speciality manager for the breast cancer service. I'm just also about to undertake another apprenticeship again whilst being paid my normal salary and being given that time off the job to complete the apprenticeship. This time it's a level five operations department manager, which is the level of a degree, so it's higher than the education I've got at the moment, and it will enable me to have even more knowledge and experience and potentially go up another band or two. It's just been so good to be able to learn on the job and have those opportunities which I don't think are massively known about until you get into the NHS. I've not been pushed into any of my apprenticeships, it's been me wanting to take those on, but having the support from people around me and being able to shadow people doing different roles.

It has really opened my eyes to what different jobs there are within the NHS and how, even if you don't have a really high level of education before you join, there are so many opportunities within the NHS to carry on working up the ladder if you want to. And just to put it into perspective what the band system is like, I started as a band two administrator, which is around £20,000 a year for a full-time role. In those eleven years I've been in the NHS or wider NHS, I've gone up four bands. It just puts into perspective a bit of how quickly you can move, if that's what you're wanting to, and you're open to change and new challenges. For me, I want to get the experience at my band six level whilst doing my apprenticeship, but I can also move roles even whilst that apprenticeship is going on. The degree-level apprenticeship, I think is around three years, which I was a bit hesitant at first to start because I thought maybe I won't want to stay in this speciality for three years. But it doesn't mean that you are stuck where you are.

You can move and it can move with you as long as you've got that support from your manager and the manager that you could potentially be moving to. So, for me, it's just been the best way for me to learn because I decided not to go to university, but I'm now getting the education up to a degree level and there are many opportunities to go even higher than that if I wanted to. For me, I think the take-home message to give anyone is “don't be put off”. Maybe if you don't have a degree yet, or even if you've only just got GCSE and you haven't even gone into college yet, there are so many opportunities once you get into the NHS, if you're dedicated and you have a good work ethic. It's definitely all about just knowing what avenues to look down once you're in the NHS and getting on that ladder to start with. Sometimes you need to start from the bottom and then you can work up and it gives you such a broad amount of knowledge as well of the whole NHS.

So, yeah, that's really my short journey in the last eleven years. Eleven years sounds like a long time, but it's gone really quickly and I've met so many people, even walking around the hospital now, to see people from when I started on my band two role, and they always ask what I'm doing now and how things are going. There's just so much going on in the NHS that you can go really far.

Do you think there's much sort of understanding amongst sort of the wider NHS team as to what your role is?

It's a tricky one, because as speciality managers, we work really close to the matrons. The matrons usually cover a number of wards or departments. Then the speciality managers from each of those departments will link in with the matron as well as their clinical leads at the head of their clinical side of the department. So we make up what we call a ‘tri’ and all have the same although we're all different banding, we all have the same level of decision-making and input together. So I think once you're in the hospital, everyone will have a speciality manager for their division. But it's probably not until you get in the hospital that you'll understand what they do and that they even exist.

If I put it into context, in our breast unit, it's like we've got three managers in our one unit. So I'm the manager for the admin side of things, our clinical leaders, the admin manager for all the doctors and consultants and registers, and then our matron is the manager for all the nursing staff.