60 seconds with...Cameron Braddy-Green
We spoke to Cameron Braddy-Green, chief registrar and gastroenterologist, about his work at Whipps Cross, highlights from the past year and being nominated for the Star of the Month award.
Hi Cameron, can you tell us a bit more about you?
I’m currently here at Whipps Cross as the chief registrar, which is a programme run by the Royal college of Physicians, and I’m also a gastroentereologist and general medical registrar by trade. This year for me is 50% clinical and 50% is management and leadership and the latter is intended to give us the skillset to work well as a consultant.
What does a normal working week looks like for you?
Two or three days a week I’m clinical and that would involved doing endoscopy and also seeing patients in outpatients. My personal interest is inflamatory bowel disease (IBD) so I tend to keep my patient cohort more to do with IBD and work closely with the lead for Gastroenterology.
I also attend the governance meetings and I see my role at the moment as being the person who can generate and bounce ideas off around equality improvement within both gastroenterology and also the medical service.
The other two days of the week I focus on large scale QI projects so I’m working on a weekend discharge and out of hours on call improvement project and I’m also working on bringing the national plan for same day emergency care into gastroenterology, so how can we coordinate all of the different services we offer. There’s a lot that we do at gastroenterology and hepatology and weare spread througout the hospital so we are looking at how we can bring that into one place so our patients get the most efficient service.
I also get involved in teaching medical students and junior doctors.
How long have you been at Whipps Cross?
I started in September 2021 with this role but this is actually my third year back at Whipps Cross. I’ve been at the hospital as a student but then I was here formally for my first year.
What do you enjoy the most about your work at the moment?
What I enjoy the most is the non-clinical training so having a mentor, which is the medical director. I meet with her once a month and I get to attend hospital boards and lots of focus groups at a fairly senior level and it does give me a different input and view on how the NHS works.
It’s really valuable when you start thinking about your service in a different way, so not always thinking clinical but thinking about the bigger picture and it has been really helpful and that’s what I’ve enjoyed the most so far, having the time to actually try to make long standing change.
Any highlights over the past year?
A particular highlight for me would be the purpose of what I was nominated for Star of the Month. With not much notice we were informed about the Omicron variant and it looked as if December and January could have been very uncomfortable work wis, and I’m particularly proud about the communication I had with the workforce in terms of doctors of different grades.
I feel that this enabled the impending implementation of another Covid rota to be accepcted more than it had been in previous times. In the past I’ve been involved in rotas that feel that were imposed but this one in particular felt more like a collaborative approach and then as a thank you, I arranged through a charity called The Scrubbery to donate wellbeing packages to our work force and our doctors that did some extra shifts during a difficult time.
Why is important to nominate colleagues for a Star of the Month award?
I’d definitely encourage people to nominate each and everyone for things they think colleagues have gone above and beyond the normal duties.
I think that everyone in the NHS comes to work and wants to do a good job in regards to clinical care and although we have a salary that we take home for compesate for the extra time we work, actually a lot of people would go above and beyond and we rely heavily in the NHS’ good will so having a formal recognition like this which isn’t monetary but something that recognises people who have done something out of the norm, goes a long way to just make you feel appreciate it and make you want to do the same for others.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
For anyone reading this, I would recommend Whipps Cross as a place to work, as I said before, it’s my third year here, I think the hospital has a great team spirit and I think what you would achieve here from a clinical point of view and the difference you can make to people’s lives puts Whipps Cross high up in the ranking in terms of best places to work, so if people have the choice or are interested, come and join Whipps Cross.