Heartbeat: Hello my name is… Dani Joseph

January 12, 2021

We say hello to a familiar face as Dani Joseph joins imaging. We caught up with her to find out her new role.

Dani has had a varied career to date. Looking back at her career path, she recalls: “I worked as a healthcare assistant when I was at university in Bristol on renal and paediatric wards. I then went on to spend a year in immunology labs during my biomedical science degree. I did a master’s degree in human rights and focused a lot of my work on refugee and healthcare rights. I also did a lot of voluntary work during that time – Samaritans, Red Cross and Sense. My first experience of running anything was the local charity we set up in Bristol giving support and advice to anyone with issues around asylum, refugee or any other kind of migration status.”

Speaking of joining the NHS, Dani commented: “I initially joined the NHS via the management training scheme. It was a brilliant experience, and, I always promote it to others.

“After the scheme, I moved to Stoke on Trent and worked in oncology and haematology splitting and merging the services with those at Royal Stoke Hospital. I went on to manage several surgical specialities with a large bed base and, focused a significant amount of time to developing nurse-led services and advanced practice within colorectal and urology.”

For the past three years, Dani and her husband have lived in Birmingham. She told us: “For the first year I worked at University Hospitals Birmingham managing general surgery. I moved to SWBH in September 2018 as deputy group director of operations for women and child health. It was a great welcoming to SWBH and, I quickly realised what fantastic people work here and how dedicated they are to the patients we look after. When I wanted to apply for a group director of operations role, I knew I wanted to do that at SWBH, working and building on the positives I could already see.”

Dani has recently moved to the imaging department, and is enjoying the new area and everything it has to offer. “It is an incredibly diverse and technically focused area. I love how the team come from many different professional backgrounds – we have nurses, doctors, scientists, radiographers, technicians, support workers and administrative functions. It’s a great example of a multi-disciplinary team working and brings a range of experience and opinions to any discussion.

“We’ve got some fascinating work developing at the moment. The department is progressing with some artificial intelligence projects and went live last month with a clinical application for acute ischaemic stroke. It will be an area to watch in the coming months and years.

“There have also been several national reports out on Diagnostics and Radiology, Get It Right First Time and an NHS England report by Professor Sir Mike Richards. Alongside greater regional collaboration since the pandemic started, this gives us a good platform for any improvement work. It is great to see that a number of the recommendations in these reports are things that the team pioneered and have embedded or are on our radar for implementation when we move to MMUH as part of our acute care model. It shows that we are leading regionally and indeed nationally on many fronts.”

So how have the team coped with the pandemic we asked. Dani explained: “COVID has been a challenge as it has been for the rest of the organisation. We have days where up to 40 per cent of the inpatients going through the department for scans or IR procedures are classified as ‘red’ and the team have a tried and tested process for managing the red and amber streams.

“Teams are working really hard to make sure we can support with early scanning sessions and extended inpatient capacity on the scanners at both sites. During the first wave, a large diagnostic backlog built up and the teams have done a fantastic job reducing those over the summer.

“COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of workforce planning and this is something I intend to focus on over the next few years. We need to be flexible in how we work, whether this is home working or in the department. We also need to look at how we can deliver services outside of conventional role types and extend the use of advanced practice. The demand for diagnostics is increasing and this needs a real-time development to be able to deliver within the timescales needed by our patients.”