Meet the Team

Tell us a bit about yourself and your professional background

I trained as a Cardiac Physiologist around 15 years ago, completing a BSc in Clinical Physiology and working within all fields of Cardiology. I have always been passionate in Echocardiography and have specialised in this field for the last ten years.

I achieved British Society of Echocardiography accreditation in 2013 and worked within the NHS as an Echocardiographer but also within the agency sector since then. I have been a BSE assessor since 2019 and recently completed my Scientist Training Programme (STP) equivalency, resulting in my becoming an HPC registered Healthcare Scientist.

When (and why) did you join XEC?

I joined XEC as a Regional Lead Echocardiographer in June 2021 after working for 5 years within the NHS. I was keen to continue working in a senior role, with management responsibilities and a substantial clinical aspect to the job. This job role gave me the flexibility I was looking for, giving me a great work/life balance and opportunities to grow and develop further in my career.

In January 2022, I was appointed Training & Development Lead, which gave me further responsibilities around maintaining the skills of our substantive clinical team and helping to develop a training and competency plan for overseas recruits.

What specific skills and experience do you bring to the role?

My role involves some clinical responsibilities, such as carrying out Transthoracic Echocardiography to BSE standards. I have over ten years of experience in Echocardiography and have current BSE and EACVI accreditation. I also regularly keep up to date with CPD by attending conferences and completing training courses.

In terms of the other aspects of the role, I have previous management experience within the NHS, the role involved training staff and mentoring them through the BSE accreditation, as well as delivering training content to multi-disciplinary teams.

What are your responsibilities?

My responsibilities outside of my clinical duties are to develop and implement training content for all members of the clinical team, as well as provide supervision and a development plan for junior members of the clinical team. Additionally, I am responsible for ensuring all staff are up to date with CPD and BSE accreditation status. I am also involved with overseas recruitment and with personal development appraisals of staff.

What does a typical day look like in your role?

My typical day depends on whether I’m rostered on clinical or non-clinical duties. Clinics are very unpredictable; sometimes (not very often!) you have steady days where acquiring echo images and reporting is straightforward. On other days, you may face technically difficult studies and be required to deal with urgent findings from the scan you have performed straightaway. This requires you to work very well under pressure and to think on your feet, as an immediate escalation of the patient to acute medical teams is sometimes vital for patient care.

On my non-clinical days, I perform a range of tasks, including one-to-ones with staff, designing training content for exam preparation, coordinating the rota and supervising staff remotely.

What’s the best thing about being in the XEC team?

I am really pleased to work in a team who are passionate about the services we provide and work hard to achieve the highest standard of service for our customers, staff, and ultimately — the patients that we treat and care for. It is great to work in a team that supports and encourages new ideas of working from all members of the team to develop our services.

What does 2023 hold for XEC? What are you excited about?

We are keen to expand our services within Echocardiography, this includes growth into new areas of the UK. Personally, I’m excited to see our substantive clinical team grow and to support these staff with their training needs.

Click here to view our available echocardiographer roles!