Samantha Barnbrook

Start Date: 05/09/2022

Employer: Royal Devon NHS

Brief description of your duties and responsibilities:

Secondment: Sept 22-March 23; initially funded by NHSE:

• Represent AHPs in the organisation to support workforce transformation and build a sustainable workforce, education, and training strategy with a focus on building capacity and structures to support AHP priority initiatives
• Map the current provision of the AHP workforce across acute and community services
• Line manage four support staff who were tasked with creating an AHP Support workforce review.
• Focus on key areas, which include: apprenticeship development, retention and support for students, newly qualified and early careers through preceptorship programmes, international recruitment; and developing pipeline projects to support career developments of the AHP support workforce
• Work closely with the ICS / AHP faculty to develop a shared vision.

Secondment: April 23 - March 24

The workforce plan included:

Devising a workforce plan with clear objectives and time frames to deliver key aspects of the AHP strategy, focusing on the recruitment, retention, and development of the AHP workforce, including support workers.

Develop an 18-month Royal Devon organisational AHP strategic workforce plan that builds workforce supply across all AHP professions, including apprenticeships, return to practice, new graduates, and internationally educated staff.

Promote AHP visibility, influence, and impact

Make recommendations regarding the sustainability of AHP developments and programme of work, including optioneering workshops with the strategic workforce planning manager locally and across the Devon system. By assessing various options against defined criteria, I can rely on data and analysis rather than just assumptions or intuition. This has helped me to promote thinking beyond the obvious, often revealing opportunities for greater efficiency or impact. It has allowed us as an organisation to assess potential risks and uncertainties associated with each AHP profession, preparing for contingencies. The systematic nature of optioneering builds trust by showing how decisions are made and also provides a documented process that can be reviewed and offers annual benchmarking for measuring the success of the chosen option.

April 2024-present:

Participating in a short, intensive project to embed good rostering practices for AHPs has demonstrated clear and immediate value at both operational and strategic levels. As a senior leader, I have seen first-hand how focused collaboration across disciplines can rapidly identify inefficiencies, share best practices, and implement meaningful change. This initiative will not only improve service delivery through better alignment of workforce capacity with patient need but also empower teams with increased visibility, autonomy, and fairness in scheduling. The agility of this approach fostered a culture of continuous improvement and has laid a strong foundation for sustainable workforce planning, ultimately enhancing both staff wellbeing and patient outcomes.

I have worked to establish an Allied Health Professional (AHP) preceptorship programme that is accessible across the entire trust, with a strong focus on supporting staff in community teams. This is particularly important to me, as preceptorship plays a vital role in retaining staff—especially those working in autonomous roles where access to immediate peer support can be limited. I am passionate about creating a supportive foundation for early career professionals by fostering confidence, competence, and a sense of belonging. I firmly believe that structured career development opportunities, mentorship, and flexible working arrangements are key to building a resilient and motivated workforce capable of thriving in independent practice.

As an AHP Workforce Lead, I have played a key role in advancing a "grow your own" workforce approach within Royal Devon, supporting career progression from apprenticeships and support worker roles through to advanced clinical practice. A significant achievement has been the successful submission of a paper to the Trust Delivery Board, leading to the implementation of new, generic job descriptions for AHP support workers. This ensured equitable and transparent career pathways, enabling staff to develop and progress within the organisation. I have also led on exploring effective national staffing models for AHPs, ensuring our workforce planning is aligned with long-term organisational priorities. This has included embedding succession planning, talent development, and innovative recruitment strategies, such as collaborative work with our marketing team to raise the profile of at-risk professions like orthoptics.

I was proud to have contributed to the Trust’s multi-professional strategic workforce planning initiative, Strategic Workforce Transformation: A Story of Data-Driven Impact, which was shortlisted in the RLDatix Awards under the "Improving Care through Data and Insight" category this year. This collaborative effort brought together colleagues from education, recruitment, clinical practice, and strategic workforce teams to co-design an integrated planning framework. By introducing an in-house optioneering tool and investing in apprenticeships and role development, the project proactively addressed staffing gaps, improved retention, and enhanced financial visibility and productivity across the organisation. My role was to act as an informed advocate for the Allied Health Professions, ensuring their workforce needs were fully represented within the strategic planning process. By championing AHP perspectives, I helped shape a data-driven framework that supported targeted role development, improved retention, and aligned workforce capacity with patient care priorities.

I am currently project lead for the implementation of a wide scale non-medical job planning project across the trust. This has included securing external CPD funds to initiate a test of change, liaison with external software providers to procure 1500 licenses and a detailed project plan to successfully deliver strong staff engagement, completed job plans, leading to actionable and credible data so that the trust understands its workforce capacity.

Through the completion of my Senior Healthcare Leadership Apprenticeship, I have significantly enhanced my ability to communicate with clarity, precision, and strategic intent. As an example; I have applied these skills to improve information sharing across senior leadership teams—developing impactful infographics to distil complex data for operational teams and refining email etiquette to ensure messaging is purposeful, inclusive, and aligned with organisational tone. These tools have supported more effective engagement, improved decision-making, and fostered a culture of transparency and collaboration.

For each segment of my current workforce portfolio I have developed my experience to create high-impact presentations, highlight reports, and assurance documentation to executive boards, programme boards, and system-level stakeholders. My approach combines strategic insight with clear, data-driven narratives to support informed decision-making and demonstrate progress against key deliverables. I routinely produce information reports, risk assessments, and benefits realisation summaries, ensuring governance standards are met and that stakeholders are kept fully informed of programme status, risks, and outcomes. These outputs are tailored to diverse audiences, from frontline teams to national regulators, and are designed to build confidence, transparency, and accountability across all levels of the organisation.

The clinical aspect of my role was to perform advanced podiatric assessment and diagnosis of patients with complex physical and psychological conditions and successfully develop and deliver an individualised treatment programme to a high-risk clinical caseload.

I managed clinical resources effectively, maximising excellent working relationships with podiatry team members and working in partnership with a wide range of other stakeholders to deliver efficient care. Operational excellence thrives on a culture of continuous improvement. I introduced regular drop-in sessions and feedback loops within my team, encouraging employees to contribute innovative ideas. One such idea led to improved antibiotic stewardship.

My team leader role involved co-originating, delivering, and evaluating the service provided to podiatry patients. I have established excellent relationships with my team and provide clinical supervision and peer support through regular 121's and annual appraisals. As a management team, we analysed data collected from Epic to provide equity of care across our geographical area.

I led on specific projects: the Podiatry Apprenticeship and the traditional degree student placements to ensure development of a robust workforce pipeline. I led the redesign of a core operational process on how we embed undergraduates into our profession. My aim was to streamline workflows and improve outcomes. By conducting detailed process mapping and stakeholder consultation, I identified inefficiencies contributing to reduced capacity and poor student experience. Implementing Lean Six Sigma methodologies, I have improved the onboarding experience for students and administration staff and maintained operational agility while maintaining high-quality patient care.

I have written and developed a project plan for the Apprenticeship Programme in Podiatry and work as a clinical mentor to the apprentices. Implementing an apprenticeship program has offered significant value to the wider organisation, employees, and the wider community. Offering apprenticeships widens participation, supports workforce development, addresses skill shortages, and creates a pathway for sustainable talent growth. As podiatrists, it has not only allowed us to cultivate a skilled and loyal workforce but also enhance our competitiveness, fulfil our social responsibilities, and contribute to the broader economic and societal landscape in both a rural and urban deprived area in the South West. It is a strategic investment with far-reaching benefits for both Royal Devon and the wider community.

I have been a link between mentors and Plymouth University to support the podiatry degree students who come to us for placements. My role is to review the processes in place, identify any problems, and put forward solutions that promote excellent clinical involvement for both the student and mentor. Recent NETS data has placed is top-performing Allied Health Professional Team in Royal Devon.

I worked in this role for twelve years as a Specialist Podiatrist practicing across a rural community providing appropriate podiatric care to the high risk patients. In my clinical role I diagnosed and treated a wide variety of foot and ankle problems, offering preventative care, providing health education and carrying out nail surgery. I partook in weekly wound management clinics for the active/ high risk foot.

Project Involvement was a key focus in my role, as part of the integrated diabetes footcare project team I supported the development of new service protocols to offer safe and effective services. One of my areas of responsibility was for the writing of risk assessments and procedures for domiciliary care as this was new to the department. A fundamental part of being a link podiatrist was to act as a specialised source of expertise for the management of patients with diabetes and provide an advisory service to patients, colleagues, other health care professionals, GPs and consultants. Another segment of this role was to support the delivery of care for chronic foot ulcers and patients who were housebound in collaboration with the district nursing team. From the outset our aim as a team was to provide support to the nurses in the acute, community and residential care settings. This was achieved by delivering training regarding trust pathways of care and following of NG19 diabetes guidelines in an effort to create sustainable and equitable care for our patients.

I was a sign off mentor for students from Plymouth University and was fortunate to be recognised over a number of years with a student award for my efforts. I also acted as a buddy mentor to new and junior staff and provided feed back when asked as part of the annual development and review process. I volunteered as a staff side and health & safety representative for podiatry. This provided me with the opportunity to engage with the wider organisational workforce and contribute to the trust values of delivering excellent care. I sat on the job matching panel which required systematic comparisons to be made so that fair and non discriminatory pay is awarded. I was passionate about my role as Health & Well being Champion and organised and participated in a number of awareness events such as Time to Talk, Big Devon March as well as podiatry wellbeing events.

• I started working in North Warwickshire following graduation. During my time in the department, we underwent two major service contract changes. This lead to the development of new access criteria and consequently saw a transformation in the type of caseload we treated. The process enhanced both my clinical reasoning and communication skills.
• Telephone triage was adopted during my time in North Warwickshire. Effective communication and the adaption of motivational interviewing techniques proved essential to gain the necessary information over the phone. This method of training allowed us as clinicians to respond to requests for treatment promptly and sign post service users to the most appropriate health care professional.
• I was responsible for writing a new wound care form which established a set protocol for the recording of wounds. An evidence based approach was initiated to support the change from Wagner to Texas for the classification of wounds. This ensured our clinical recordings were effective and allowed for improved healthcare outcomes such as reduced healing time, reliable documentation and better patient experience validated by an audit process. Thus allowing us to provide excellent, safe, efficient and effective care.