Meet the innovator: Dr Partha Kar, Portsmouth

We're supporting Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust in their NHS70 campaign to profile their amazing staff. Read our joint piece below. 

In honour of the NHS in its 70th year, we are celebrating our wonderful staff.

This time, we’ve worked with Wessex Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) to celebrate our ongoing work to innovate our services for patients. Here we chat to Dr Partha Kar, who is a diabetes consultant and endocrinologist at QAH, and also a national associate clinical director for diabetes with NHS England – working to shape treatment for people across the country.

For Partha, who has worked in the NHS for more than twenty years, our health service is constantly adapting, changing and evolving – and innovation is at the heart of this.

Partha’s work largely focuses on both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. In his work to help people with diabetes, he helped to roll-out special technology across England, which helps patients monitor their glucose levels in a non-invasive way. He also produced an innovative comic for people with Type 1 diabetes – click here to read it.

Partha has also worked with our local AHSN - a health innovation hub which covers the Portsmouth area - to help spread his Super Six Model of Care, which is a set of gold standard ways to help treat people with diabetes. They’ve worked to help share Partha’s work across the UK, and even abroad. Partha’s work was also showcased at the international ‘Arab Health’ event in 2017, and he’s recently been approached by colleagues in Australia to find out more.

Partha and the AHSN also recently worked with the Department for International Trade on bid to help expectant mothers in Trinidad and Tobago manage gestational diabetes.

For Partha, the best thing about the NHS is how fair it is – no matter who you are, if you need the NHS’ help it’s there for you. And this contributes to the satisfaction he gets from his role.

How does Partha summarise the NHS in one word? “Complicated,” he said. “We must have a constructive conversation about how the NHS needs to innovate and modernise to keep-up with the demands on it.

“I feel that patients understand the NHS needs to modernise and adapt, but because of the huge love for the NHS in England, it’s a conversation we must have sensitively, and with compassion; but also being clear that for patients to continue to receive the best care, within financial means, we must innovate.”

The best part about Partha’s job – especially at QA – are his colleagues and the relationships he’s built; both professionally and personally.

Lastly, what advice does Partha have for anybody looking to join the NHS?

“Try to keep a balance, and do your best not to take your role to heart. We all do an important job, and do our best for patients every day; but remember to take time for you, and spend time with your friends and family,” he said.

You can follow Partha on twitter: @parthaskar