ÜberClients

Director for Public Voice, NIHR Centre for Engagement and Dissemination (CED), National Institute for Health Research.

“Sam facilitated an online team away day for the new NIHR Centre for Engagement and Dissemination. The team was new, many of us had not met face to face, and there were a number of tricky challenges facing us, including clarifying our purpose and mission and how we were going to work together as a team that had launched in Covid lockdown.

I was impressed with the care and thought that Sam put into planning the day, working closely with me, and with the skilled, unflappable, and engaging way in which she guided the discussion. The day turned out to be an important moment for building the team, providing a sense of direction, laying bare some areas of tension, and generating greater clarity both about what we needed to do next, and what it was better to park. At that point in our evolution, we needed external facilitation, and Sam was absolutely the right person for the job.”

Chief Executive, National Voices

Working with Sam is always a rewarding and effective experience.

Sam not only plans and delivers well controlled projects; she is also completely up for responding to the constantly changing context and ideas that can easily derail a project. She helps us think, keeps looping in key stakeholders and acts as a thoughtful ‘guardian of the plan’ whilst constantly adapting our actions and decisions.

She has a lovely manner and way of working with people from all walks of life.

Her commitment to the best possible outcomes for the client she works for, but more importantly to the communities we support is plain for everyone to see. An added bonus that you don’t often get with consultants is that she even assumes a role in developing more junior colleagues, bringing them along and helping them with feedback.

Running a small charity can be very hard. Working with people like Sam makes it much, much easier.

Head of Improvement, Point of Care Foundation

The Point of Care Foundation has worked with Sam over many years and we have collaborated on a number of projects all of which were focused on placing patients and families at the centre of improvements in care.

This working relationship means that Sam is a “go to” person when we are seeking a collaborator. I always know that Sam will contribute thoughtfully to the design of programmes, and will deliver reliably to our clients. I always learn something new when I work alongside Sam.

Not only can we be sure we will have a high quality product when we work with Sam, we also know that we will have an enjoyable experience. I always look forward to working with her.

We look forward to continuing with our collaboration with Sam and Uberology in 2020.

Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs, Health Innovation Network

I would have no hesitation in recommending Sam. Sam is a pleasure to work with. She’s incredibly flexible and responsive, also astute and creative. Sam is able to consider issues and hone in on the heart of the matter, using her insight to guide her creativity. As a result of working with Sam I have no doubt that our results have been stronger and our engagement with staff more effective.

Programme Director, Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network

I had heard good things about Sam – she came highly recommended!  I felt that Sam really listened to our brief, was really flexible and open.  She spent time understanding our organisation. It was great to have someone with such expertise and we benefitted from her wealth of knowledge and her ‘can do’ approach. Sam challenged and stretched our thinking in a really positive way.

We received more than we expected from Sam. As well as delivering a comprehensive report and recommendations, on time and in budget, she was very generous with her resources and gave us lots of additional information. Sam also follows up after the work has ended – she is genuinely interested in supporting her clients.

Coach | Speaker | Author

You put on an outstanding event: the elements of the day and the sequence of the contributions worked extremely well. The blend of the academic, discussion space, energy and self-reflection all contributing to the bigger picture of staff wellbeing and creating shifts in organisations worked brilliantly. It was one of the best events I’ve attended this year.

Director, Transforming Health Ltd

I knew of Sam’s expertise through a number of mutual acquaintances from the NHS Institute.  Sam has worked with me on a number of complex pieces of work over the last two years and has demonstrated her professional approach with NHS front line teams through to senior people in hospital trusts and NHS England.  Sam has a real commitment to driving improvement in patient and staff experience.  Her writing skills are excellent and I’ve never know her miss a deadline!  I have also appreciated her ‘unflappable’ nature when running webinars or larger scale events which may not always go to plan!

Head of Communications and Engagement, Imperial College Health Partners

We were aware of Sam previously through the great work she has carried out for the NHS Institute of Innovation and Improvement and other organisations. We are extremely pleased with the Patient and Participation Framework she created for us, as well her subsequent work to support ICHP in embedding patient and public participation at the centre of everything we do. As a result of working with Sam, we have increased quality service user involvement in all of our programmes.

Senior Programme Manager (Dementia Clinical Theme and Patient Experience) Health Innovation Network

Sam always brings a fresh perspective to our work and is a pleasure to have as part of the team.

She has supported us to try out new ways of doing things and to take risks – that usually pay off! For example, at a recent high profile user-involvement event, Sam sourced a poet to help stimulate creative thinking and capture the main learning points from the day. Despite some initial scepticism on our part, the poet was a huge success and helped make it a truly memorable day.

I think a lot of this success has been down to her own depth of experience and knowledge, but also her fantastic network of high calibre contacts – if she can’t do something herself she always knows someone who can.

Regional Lead for Patient Safety / Head of Quality North East Central London NHS England, London

Sam had been recommended as a great organiser and facilitator – so my expectations were high and she did not disappoint. She has a terrific gift for energising people during a workshop, but in such a clever, intuitive way that they don’t feel ‘jollied along’ which can antagonise.

It was largely due to Sam’s engineering of our multi-stakeholder workshop that we had such positive outcomes – which have set us up for enduring improvement work across the system.

I was very impressed with the way that Sam planned so meticulously for the event.  The agenda for the workshop incorporated a range of sessions which cleverly moved between stimulating innovative thinking, meaningful collaboration and reflection.

Director of Innovation, Ko Awatea

I have no hesitation in recommending Sam. She has a wealth of expertise in every aspect of patient engagement and experience and is equally able to work at a policy, strategic or operational level. Most recently Sam has managed the National Patient Feedback Challenge programme which is having excellent results within local units, organisations and health systems.

Healthcare Measurement and Improvement, NHS Elect

Sam has an in depth knowledge of the ways to engage with patients, what’s worked and what hasn’t. I have found her ever ready to give sound advice but she doesn’t parade that knowledge or force it on you. It has been a pleasure to work with her at the NHS Institute.

NHS Improving Quality Delivery Team

Sam is a real champion for patient engagement and experience. She is one of the “go to” people in the UK for understanding the way to integrate information from service user experience into service planning. Her project management, team co-ordination and relationship building skills have enabled her to deliver some major programmes to improve things for the people who use our health services.

Policy Manager, Department of Health

I have been most impressed with Sam’s very extensive subject expertise, combined with drive and enthusiasm and professional programme management capability to deliver some ground breaking programmes of work in Patient Experience over the last 3 to 4 years.

Programme Associate, NHS Improving Quality

We went to Sam because of her extensive knowledge and experience of supporting the NHS deliver change.  We wanted someone who could bring together theory and practice and who could help us design ways to support change leaders in the NHS.

Sam helped us develop our thinking and structure our approaches – helping us find new ways to view the problems we were working on.

Managing Director, Health Innovation Network

I was recommended Sam’s help by two trusted colleagues independently, and was expecting her to have both expert knowledge and practical improvement skills.

Sam has been critical in the Health Innovation Network pace setting in the authentic involvement of users and a user voice in the rolling out of innovation in a post Francis world.

We wanted to develop a sustainable platform for improving outcomes for patients, where both patient involvement, and the parallel improvement of patient experience were integral to programmes, not an add-on.

We expected expertise in improvement methodology, but in addition were helped by a real congruence with core NHS values alongside a willingness to work with new technologies and social media to speed the rate of change for patient benefit. The combination of work ethic, values and innovation is rare.

Director, Organisational Redesign and Performance Excellence, Eastern Health, Victoria, Australia.

Coming from Australia, we don’t have groups/services like the Health Innovation Network, so we didn’t know what to expect.  I wish we did have groups similar to yours as I can see very clearly the ‘value add’ to individual services that you work with but also to the broader health system.

The whole group were very pleased with the sessions and information put together for us.  As a group, we were all able to meet with relevant hospital staff and see relevant practices/places to meet our group and individual needs. We were so happy to have someone to show us around and to put us in contact with so many committed health care professionals.

We wanted to be able to see what was the same, what was different and what could we learn and implement in our health service to improve the care and experience of our patients.  We certainly walked away with a long list of things that we could do differently and better.