Four health professionals are offered Quality Improvement Fellowships

Four health professionals from the UK have been offered a prestigious Quality Improvement Fellowship by the Health Foundation.

The 2011 Quality Improvement fellows are:

• Ajit Abraham, Consultant Hepato-pancreato-biliary Surgeon, Barts and the London NHS Trust.
• Asan Akpan, Consultant Physician in Geriatric and General (Internal) Medicine, Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
• Chris Grant, Deputy Clinical Director – Clinical Care Consultant, Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
• Professor Sheehan, Chief Executive Officer, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust.

The fellows will spend a year in the USA at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developing skills in healthcare quality improvement techniques. On returning, they will put their learning into practice to drive improvements at their organisations, as well as at a national level. 

Each fellow will be focusing on their own area of interest to improve healthcare quality, during their year at the IHI.

Jo Bibby, Director of Improvement Programmes at the Health Foundation said, ‘We are delighted to be supporting four such talented professionals. Our previous Quality Improvement Fellows are beginning to make real changes to the quality of care in the UK. We are confident that this year’s fellows will follow in their footsteps.’

Each year, the Health Foundation’s Quality Improvement Fellows take up their places in July for approximately a year, relocating to the US for the duration of their tenure. These individuals must be senior NHS leaders who are clinically qualified and have a track record of achievement in quality improvement, and the motivation to become quality improvement champions within the UK.

The aim is that on their return, fellows will integrate their learning into processes and procedures at their employing organisation in order to really impact on service improvement and promote quality improvement nationally.

The Health Foundation Quality Improvement Fellowships will be open for application for the 2012 cohort on 4 July 2011.

You can read more about all of our Quality improvement Fellows, and listen to some of them describe their experiences at the IHI.