Fiona Haughey Executive Director of Nursing and Quality

About me

Fiona is a GenerationQ Fellow and Executive Director of Nursing and Quality at Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust.

After completing her felowship, Fiona became an Associate Director for Children and Families at Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust in 2011. She leads community health services including health visiting, school nurses, paediatric speech and language therapy, breastfeeding support, sexual health and smoking cessation across Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset.

Fiona has been employed by the NHS since qualifying as a nurse in 1984. She has worked in general nursing, mental health nursing, acute and community psychiatry, health visiting and community practice teaching. She moved into NHS management roles in 2001 and has held associate director posts in public health, health improvement and community services.

Before taking up her current role at Dorset HealthCare in 2011, Fiona was Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Bournemouth and Poole Community Health Services, an arms length organisation of NHS Bournemouth and Poole.

Taking part in GenerationQ gave Fiona an opportunity to explore how NHS organisations can work in partnership with local authorities and voluntary sector providers to improve the quality of health services through children’s centres. 'There are lots of different partners involved in running children’s centres in the Bournemouth and Poole area. I wanted to understand how to get the best out of relationships between the partners and find out what blocks and enables effective partnership working.

'We formed action learning sets to identify problems and come up with solutions together. The project led to significant changes in the way in which we communicate and share information, which are beginning to yield benefits for service users.'

Fiona says she’s always paid attention to people and relationships during change projects, but GenerationQ strengthened her understanding of why it’s so important to do this. 'Reviewing and improving services is a major part of my job. The programme left me with a whole toolkit of methodologies and approaches I can use to support staff through change. It also helped me to develop the emotional resilience that you need as a leader.

'I’d say that GenerationQ has made me a lot more mindful of my role as an agent of change and of the effect my actions have on other people. I regularly take a step back from my day to day work and reflect on changes that I’m leading, the impact they will have on the workforce and what it will mean for patients at the end of the journey.'