Lilian Wiles Continuing Care Assessor

About me

Lilian is a GenerationQ Fellow and Continuing Care Assessor at Cheselden Continuing Healthcare Ltd.

Lilian heads a team of specialist nurse assessors at Cheselden Continuing Care, an independent advocacy organisation for continuing health care. She leads clinical governance and promotes equity and consistency in the national application of continuing health care guidance for patients living with long term, life-limiting conditions.

Lilian qualified as a registered nurse in 1988. Her career has spanned primary, community and secondary NHS care settings, in addition to palliative care, hospice and private health care roles. From 2010-12 she was Head of Patient Services at Beating Bowel Cancer, where she provided clinical leadership for all aspects of the charity’s operations, including writing patient information and clinical support materials, supporting national awareness campaigns and helping to develop clinical pathways.

Lilian says that the new ways of thinking about improvement that she encountered on GenerationQ have led to significant changes to ways of working within her organisation. 'As an example, we now take a more balanced, evidence-based approach to collating, interpreting and presenting key evidence to primary care trusts. We’ve developed and now use validated tools which help us to demonstrate continuing health care eligibility very clearly. Care commissioners have recognised the value and quality of our work and approached us to support their own assessment processes.

'On the staff development side, we’ve introduced a robust recruitment and induction process as well as one to one mentoring and regular professional development reviews for our clinical team and case managers.'

For Lilian, one of the most valuable insights she gained during the fellowship is that improvement often arises from just a single conversation. 'It’s very empowering to know this and it’s something I regularly share with my colleagues. I always try to make every conversation count.' She adds that although she had a great deal of passion for her work before GenerationQ, the learning and personal growth she achieved through the programme have further strengthened her commitment to making a difference in the health care setting.

'I feel like I now have a virtual map and compass that help me to navigate the complexities of quality improvement and human relationships in the rapidly changing health care environment. In the long term, I want to help shape a new national strategy for continuing care in the community, to make sure it takes into account patients’ experiences and delivers an equal and consistent approach.'