Anna Winyard Solutions Architect (Director)

About me

Anna is a GenerationQ Fellow and Solutions Architect (Director) at Johnson & Johnson.

She is also Community Hospitals Manager at Burton Hospitals Foundation Trust, where she has operational responsibility for two community hospitals in Lichfield and Tamworth, located eight miles apart and 20 miles away from the trust’s main hospital in Burton upon Trent.

The clinical facilities at the community hospitals include three inpatient wards for rehabilitation and care of the elderly, two minor injury units, a renal dialysis unit, and a day surgery and endoscopy suite.

After graduating with a degree in public sector management from City University London in 2004, Anna chose to specialise in health care management roles. She spent five years at Great Ormond Street Hospital, first as clinical manager for the head and neck unit and then as operations manager for surgery. She joined Burton Hospitals as business manager for medicine in 2011 and took up her current post the following year.

Anna says that one of the things that attracted her to GenerationQ is the way it combines practical and theoretical learning. 'There’s a clear emphasis on putting improvement methodologies into practice to achieve change within your organisation, but the practical learning is underpinned by a full exploration of the theory.'

One topic that Anna is particularly interested in exploring is different approaches to decision making. 'I’d like to gain more insight into the way I make decisions, so that this can become a more conscious and rigorous process.'

Anna’s main project focussed on how to achieve lasting cultural change and engage staff in improving quality and patient experience. 'We’ve been through a period of high turnover in ward leadership and although we now have a strong management team in place, there’s a lot of work to be done in order to create a culture where every member of staff feels empowered and supported to initiate and lead change. We want to reduce the average length of stay for our elderly inpatients, improve clinical outcomes and increase our levels of patient satisfaction. Ongoing input and engagement from clinical teams will be a critical part of meeting these goals.'