Lucy Lewis, Consultant Practitioner Trainee, shares her experience of being part of the Acute Expert Group for the Wessex Acute Frailty Audit

Being part of the Acute Expert Group and Clinical Coordinator for the Wessex Acute Frailty Audit has been a hugely positive experience.  It has been excellent to work collaboratively with multi-professional colleagues from throughout the Wessex region who share the same enthusiasm for improving pathways for older people and those living with frailty.

In terms of my development as a Consultant Practitioner Trainee, the experience has provided opportunities to develop across all four domains of consultant practice. 

My role as clinical coordinator allowed me to explore and demonstrate different teaching styles and has increased my reputation regionally and nationally for expertise in both clinical and quality improvement knowledge.  Kathy Wallis, Associate Director, Strategic Themes (Healthy Ageing and Medicines Optimisation) permitted me the right balance of autonomy to demonstrate a negotiated leadership role in my contribution to the organisations we were working with while offering supervision and guidance where needed.  I now have a much clearer understanding of operational and strategic leadership priorities in the context of a regional project as we had to work across systems, valuing the unique cultures within each Trust.

I built upon my previous quality Improvement experience to apply the measurement for improvement to inform a team approach to the audit bringing quality improvement methodology to the design and implementation phases.  I was given many opportunities to present to stakeholders and present the work regionally and at national conferences in both poster format and oral presentations.

I am grateful to the Wessex AHSN, especially Kathy Wallis and Cheryl Davies, Healthy Ageing Programme Lead for this opportunity to work on this collaborative piece of work.  I would like to also acknowledge all other members of the expert group who have been inspirational colleagues to work with.  I would recommend working with the AHSN to my Health Education England, Wessex Consultant Practitioner colleagues as an excellent development opportunity.

Lucy Lewis is a Health Education England (Wessex) Consultant Practitioner Trainee specialising in Frailty and Older People.  Lucy’s clinical interests include improving pathways for older people into, out of and within the acute hospital setting.  Her Quality Improvement projects have included; Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment: From Acute to Community Setting, Delirium and the Intermediate Care Team and Think Frailty Following a Fall.  Her PhD research focuses on the involvement of older people living with cancer in decision making regarding treatment and support. Lucy represents the British Geriatric Society Nurse and Allied Health Professional Council on the Policy and Communications Committee.