Mr Hiro Tanaka Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon

About me

Hiro is a GenerationQ Fellow and Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Aneurin Bevan Health Board.

He is a member of the Aneurin Bevan Continuous Improvement (ABCi) division at Aneurin Bevan Local Health Board in Wales. His role in the ABCi team focuses on engaging clinical leaders in quality improvement.

After graduating in medicine from Cardiff University in 1993, Hiro specialised in trauma and orthopaedics and became a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in 2005. He was appointed Clinical Director for Trauma and Orthopaedics at Aneurin Bevan Local Health Board in 2006. In this role he led transformation of the care pathway for musculoskeletal disorders and quality improvement in hip fracture care. He moved to his current role in April 2013, shortly after the ABCi division was established.

Hiro is an honorary lecturer at Cardiff University and a member of the British Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society’s education committee. He has an MSc in orthopaedic engineering and holds two fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

For Hiro, taking part in GenerationQ led to a radical change in his approach to leadership. 'In the past I tended to lead from the front, by setting out where we wanted to get to and how we’d do it. Now, my style is much more inclusive – I see my role as facilitating discussions and empowering frontline teams to come up with solutions themselves. I think that in the NHS we often make the mistake that the leaders hold the answers, when actually it’s the frontline staff who do.'

He says that his new perspective on leadership is part of the reason he decided to move from a clinical director post to his current position in the ABCi team. 'As a clinical director I had a senior and very visible leadership role, but I came to see that my ability to effect change isn’t dependent on my job title. My role now is more focused on ‘backstage’ leadership and driving improvement by engaging people through individual conversations and relationships.'

One area that Hiro is focusing on is promoting a patient and family-centred approach in hip fracture care. 'GenerationQ helped me to see how integral staff experience is to the delivery of patient-centred care. I’m working closely with the full range of staff on our hip fracture ward to understand what each person aspires to achieve in their work and how I can support them.'