Dr Eleri Davies Consultant Medical Microbiologist and Director Infection Prevention and Control / Faculty Lead for Healthcare Associated Infections 1000 Lives Plus Programme

About me

Eleri is a GenerationQ Fellow and Consultant Medical Microbiologist and Director of Infection Prevention and Control at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.

She also has a national role in reducing health care associated infections, as a faculty member of Wales’ 1000 Lives Plus improvement programme. Her faculty role involves advising on evidence-based priorities for improvements in health care association infections and supporting with the development of strategy.

After qualifying in medicine in 1989, Eleri went on to train in medical microbiology. She was appointed a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1998 and has held consultant posts at North Bristol NHS Trust and Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust.

From 2006-12 Eleri was Director of the Welsh Healthcare Associated Infection Programme Team at Public Health Wales NHS Trust.

Eleri says that her interest in quality improvement began with her involvement in the 1000 Lives programme. 'As a faculty member for 1000 Lives and then 1000 Lives Plus, I’ve been able to learn quite a bit about quality improvement. But all of the learning has been very much ‘on the job’ and I wanted to study the topic in greater depth and in a systematic way. I found out about GenerationQ from colleagues who’d previously completed the fellowship and saw it as an ideal way to build on my practical understanding of quality improvement and reflect on its role in infection control.'

Eleri particularly values the way that GenerationQ uses personalised support and coaching to help fellows to achieve improvements in their organisations. 'The emphasis is firmly on supporting you with your ongoing work and I know that working with coaches and my peers on the fellowship will help me when it comes to dealing with challenging situations.'

One of the areas that Eleri will be concentrating on during her fellowship is how to embed the reduction of health care associated infections in the health board’s Leading Improvement for Patient Safety (LIPS) project. 'I’m interested in how we can use improvement science to transform the way we prevent and manage health care associated infections.

'My initial focus will be on reducing the risk associated with medical devices and delivering reductions in C. difficile and MRSA infections, supporting the newly-formed clinical service boards to take this work forward as one of their key patient safety priorities.'