Today we turn our attention to the General Manager for Leicestershire at EMAS, Richard Lyne who started his career in the NHS as a nurse in September 2000. Richard has been with EMAS just over three years since joining in April 2017.
He tells us his story:
“Throughout my school years, the thought of becoming a nurse never crossed my mind and I never had the ‘vocation’ that many others often talk about. I always wanted to work in IT and this is how my career developed.
“However, following my father being admitted into hospital, I spent time talking to and observing the work of the ward nursing staff and this is where the draw of the nursing profession started. After reflecting on my own values, what I wanted out of a career but also what I could contribute as an individual, I felt that a move into nursing would be a positive step and give me the human connection that my previous roles in IT lacked.
“My advice to those considering a career in nursing is to spend as much time and experience as many areas of nursing and healthcare as possible and not look to specialise too soon.
“Although as part of my training I had placements in most clinical specialities, once I had qualified I had a career path which focused on emergency medicine/acute cardiology and often look back and wish I had moved around different specialities and areas to gain a wide experience of nursing care as possible.
“For me the biggest change in nursing has been public expectations of healthcare. The world has moved on so much in terms of information available and the speed at which things can be available. When you can order something online and have it delivered within 24 hours, the public expect their healthcare to be as quick. The internet has given everyone the capability to find out information about their symptoms, which can often come at odds with our own clinical decision making. This has resulted in me developing communication skills with patients and developing clinical relationships being more about a partnership rather than that of a directive/expert relationship.
“Putting aside the current Coronavirus pandemic which I suspect may become the ‘new’ greatest challenge of my career, I would say it was moving from a direct clinical role into my first clinical management role.
“This brought a different perspective and different challenges, so I no longer had to look after one or two patients and a small team, but I now found myself responsible for budgets, meeting key performance indicators and ensuring clinical leadership.
“In the early days it sometimes felt like a tug of war game pulled between needs of patients and the needs of the organisation, however overtime I learnt that the two aren’t mutually exclusive and the key is that both are the same thing.
“I can honestly say that the highlight of my career was joining EMAS. As I moved into hospital/nursing management roles, these took me further away from the patients and joining EMAS brought this back for me, making me realise why we all do our jobs in the health service.
“This role allows me to spend time working clinically with patients and it is an incredible privilege to work as a nurse, but even more so in a pre-hospital environment with the trust that our patients put in us at their most vulnerable and frightened times. It is also a role that has kept me developing clinically but also developing and driving our services across the division that are patient focused and clinically driven."