Frances Wiseman Deputy Director of Transformation

About me

Frances is a GenerationQ Fellow and Deputy Director of Transformation at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust.

At the time of her fellowship, Frances was the Divisional Director of Operations at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS). She was responsible for leading the operational, quality and financial performance of services including the emergency department, acute medicine, elderly care, specialist medicine and ophthalmology, radiology and pathology.

Since qualifying as a nurse in 1995, Frances has worked in and with the NHS in clinical and managerial roles across a range of care settings, both in commissioning and provider organisations. As a health planning consultant, she worked with NHS trusts to redesign clinical pathways, models of care and develop service strategies across the UK.

Frances joined Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust (which later became UHS) in 2007, in the role of Planning and Business Development Manager. She went on to become Care Group Manager, before being appointed to Divisional Director of Operations in 2010.

Frances says that taking part in GenerationQ completely changed the way she saw her role in the organisation. 'I now view quality improvement as a fundamental part of my job. For me, the way to achieve this is through a distributed model of leadership, with my role being to support and develop leaders throughout the trust. One of the areas I’m currently focusing on is embedding continuous quality improvement across all clinical areas, with a particular focus on the emergency pathway.'

Frances highlights the action learning sets as an especially helpful part of the fellowship. 'The learning sets provided space and time for honest discussion and reflection. It was fantastic to have such support from the other members of the group, to learn from their different perspectives and to be challenged in a constructive way. I gained a great deal of insight into myself and how my behaviour as a leader affects other people.

'Perhaps the most powerful thing I learnt is how important relationships and conversations are when leading quality improvement. It’s not just about setting out a process for people to follow; it’s about working with people, engaging them and empowering them to lead the process themselves.'