Northampton General Hospital

Sandra Neale

Northampton General Hospital

Sandra Neale, from Northampton General Hospital, is the Divisional Manager for Women’s, Children’s, Oncology, Haematology, and Cancer Services.

Sandra attended our Agile Leadership Programme with an objective of developing her knowledge around agile management concepts, both old and new. Sandra was keen to broaden her knowledge around all aspects of agile management through training to enhance her leadership skills.

Read what she had to say below.

At the Northampton General Hospital, our vision is to provide the best possible care to all service users.

Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust provides general acute services for a population of 380,000. We provide hyper-acute stroke, vascular and renal services to people living throughout the whole of Northamptonshire, a population of 692,000.

Our Trust is also an accredited cancer centre and provides cancer services to a wider population of 880,000 who live in Northamptonshire.

My current position is the Divisional Manager for Women’s, Children’s, Oncology, Haematology, and Cancer Services and within my role i’m responsible for providing leadership to the services within my remit.

The NHS agenda is currently facing many challenges, such as long-term financial investment so there is a continuing need to focus on transformational ways to improve the services that we provide.

I wanted to attend the Agile Leadership Programme as I have a keen interest in learning about Agile concepts, old and new, and I wanted to broaden my knowledge on all aspects of the topic. With this in mind, I wanted to use the concepts taught on the programme to help support me with the changing the way my areas perceive issues and set about finding solutions for improvement.

Alex was an exceptional tutor. He delivered the programme in a clear and concise manner and I found him to be extremely knowledgeable. Alex supported his knowledge with real-life scenarios, which really helped bring the learning to life. He made time for us to discuss points and ideas that were generated within the sessions, it was great to gain insight into other people’s industries and take away some further key learnings and ideas from them.

I feel I have gained a deeper understanding of the concepts and theories that surround the Agile processes and concepts. This course has given me the knowledge, skills and confidence to create a more responsive and effective service. Ultimately, resulting in a team that will be able to think and act more efficiently when facing challenges.

Since attending the course, I have been able to run a few sprints in my areas with success. Revolutionising the way that my teams work. I would say thank you to Alex and In Professional Development for an enjoyable and insightful course, I really enjoyed my time on the course and I feel like I’m taking a huge amount of knowledge and learnings away with me.