Anna Burhouse Director of Quality Development

About me

Anna is a GenerationQ Fellow and Director of Quality Development at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

She leads RUBIS.Qi along with two other Health Foundation Alumni, Annie Laverty and Suzie Bailey. RUBIS.Qi provides quality improvement support, coaching and training for individuals, teams and organisations.

Anna is currently coaching the Health Foundation's Scaling Up teams to spread their improvement work to adopting sites across the UK and is working with the Royal College of Physicians to develop quality improvement coaches and faculty.

Anna was previously the Director of Quality for the West of England Academic Health Science Network (WEAHSN) where she led the Evidence into Practice and Commissioning Programme, taking forward quality improvement at scale across the region to improve clinical outcomes and patient experiences by supporting the rapid uptake of research, evidence and innovation.

Anna designed bespoke quality improvement approaches to help the prevention of cerebral palsy in pre-term babies (PReCePT), atrial fibrillation stroke prevention, medicines optimisation in diabetes, telehealth in chronic kidney disease and the development of a national mental health quality improvement toolkit.

Anna also developed an Academy to help increase the capability and capacity of Quality Improvement, Innovation and Patient Safety in the West of England,  linking with the Health Foundation and Sheffield Micro Coaching Academy to train ‘Flow’ improvement coaches and to launch the first wave of Q regional offers and Commons Stewardship Groups.

Prior to her current role, Anna worked as the Director of Strategic Modernisation at 2gether NHS Foundation Trust, a provider of mental health services in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. Anna joined 2gether Trust in 2005. As Director of CAMHS she led service redesign and significantly reduced waiting times using quality improvement and patient flow methodologies before taking on a Trust-wide service improvement role in 2009 to create a range of evidence-based care packages and care pathways for mental health.

In 2012 Anna led a Health Foundation Shine award project to establish the use of a ‘Coaching for Recovery Model’ co-produced by adults with lived experience of mental illness https://www.health.org.uk/recovery-college. She continues to work for the project as a volunteer and has co-produced a new version for young people aged 16-25 called the Discovery College.

Anna continues to hold a clinical position within the Trust, alongside her Northumbria Healthcare NHSFT role, working in CAMHS as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist. Anna has been involved in the mental health, social care and learning disability sector since 1989, working in a range of health, education, social care, voluntary and private sector settings.

Throughout her career Anna has specialised in roles which combine clinical and leadership skills to improve the quality and safety of services, with a strong emphasis on the importance of service user and carer involvement.