Patient Safety Group Members

Miss Anna Paisley is a Consultant General and Upper GI Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. She has chaired the General Surgery Directorate’s Quality Improvement Team and was Lead Clinician responsible for the introduction of the surgical stream of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme to NHS Lothian. She was elected on to Council in 2015 and has chaired the College’s Patient Safety Group since 2018.

She has a particular interest in surgical recruitment, training and assessment. She was Regional Surgical Adviser for South East Scotland for 4 years, is current Year One Director of the Edinburgh Surgical Sciences Qualification and TPD for General Surgery for SE Scotland.

Mrs Claire Morgan is a Consultant in Restorative Dentistry. She sits on Dental Council and joined the RCSEd Patient Safety group in October 2020. She is a Patient Safety Specialist at Barts Health NHS Trust based at the Royal London Hospital, and Patient Safety Officer for the Association of Dental Hospitals. Claire gained an MSc in Patient Safety from Imperial College in 2021, and has completed all HSSIB patient safety investigator training courses.

Her main clinical interest lies in the Restorative care of Head and Neck Cancer patients, and in her Trust she is a core member of the Head and Neck Multidisciplinary Team. As an educational supervisor she is committed to higher training in Restorative Dentistry, and was previously lead examiner in Management for the Intercollegiate Fellowship Examination for her speciality.

My name is Sarah Healy and I am a Consultant ENT head and neck surgeon at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. I have been involved in RCSEd activities for several years and am currently Co-chair of the Younger Fellows’ committee, a member of the ENT SSB and part of the Robotic Task force group. I am excited to take over this role as representative for the Younger Fellows’ and work with the team to drive improvements in education and patient care.

James is a Professor of Dental Education and Restorative Dentistry based in the University Dental Hospital, Cardiff. James has been actively involved in the delivery of education for over 20 years - and was involved in the inaugural FDT executive committee and developing the original Standards for Dental Trainers. James also leads the ADEE (Association for Dental Education in Europe) Graduating European Dentist curriculum taskforce. His impact and innovation in teaching and training has been recognised with Principal Fellowship of Advance HE, the award of a National Teaching Fellowship, and Fellowship with the Academy of Medical Educators. His educational research interests include the use of simulation, reflective practice, resilience and coping, and curriculum reform.

Mr James Tomlinson is a Consultant Spinal Surgeon at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. He is Educational TPD for T&O in Yorkshire and a member of the Orthopaedic Selection Design Group. He is a member of the RCSEd NOTSS faculty and has supervised a number of educational leadership fellows.

Professor Angus J M Watson is a Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. He holds honorary chairs at the Universities of Aberdeen, Stirling and the Highlands & Islands. He is an elected member of council of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and a Clinical Advisor to the Scottish government. He trained in Manchester, Scotland and New Zealand before being appointed a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary in 2005. Professor Watson moved to Inverness in 2009.

His main clinical interests are surgery for inflammatory bowel disease and benign anorectal conditions. His research interests are diverse. He is a co-applicant and Principal Investigator of a wide range of national and international clinical trials. His innovations include the Scottish Surgical Boot Camp, and he is the instigator and clinical lead of the NHS Scotland Colon Capsule programme. Angus has a number of grants to promote surgical skills acquisition using bio-synthetic tissue and augmented reality. 

Mr Ray Delicata is a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Hospitals (The Grange University Hospital; Nevill Hall Hospital and the Royal Gwent Hospital) in South Wales. He led the colorectal Cancer Multi-disciplinary team for Neville Hall Hospital from 2001 until 2020 and was Lead for Colorectal Services for Aneurin Bevan Health Board from 2007 until 2012. He served as deputy chairman of the South East Wales Colorectal Cancer Network until 2010. He also served as member of Council of the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland from 2006 until 2009 representing South Wales. He is the author of several original articles and book chapters. He is a member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and an Honorary Lecturer in Surgery and Examiner for the Final MB for the University of Wales. He currently serves as Regional Surgical Advisor for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and is a member on the steering committee of the Faculty of Perioperative Care of the same College. He is also a Member of the Faculty of Surgical Trainers of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He represents the Faculty of Perioperative Care on the Patient Safety Group.

My nursing career has been based around two main themes, that of Urology and Theatres. In 2001, I began my qualified life as a staff nurse in theatre at Salford, practising as a Scrub Nurse. This was for a variety of forms of surgery such as Gynaecology, ENT, General surgery, Minor Orthopaedics and Urology. However Urology became my main place and I became department lead on this. In 2005 I became Charge Nurse and combined my other responsibilities with that of Urology lead.

In 2006 the opportunity to try my hand at Clinical Nurse Specialist came along. I took it and became a Specialist Nurse in Urology. This role gave me the chance to see the beginning and end of the urology patient’s journey. I was able to run a number of nurse lead clinics as well as assist in consultant run clinics. This position greatly enhanced my assessment of patients, understanding of the disease process and decision-making skills. I enjoyed working closely with other Urology CNS and Urologists to give the people of Salford great care.

By 2011 it was time to change. I had been missing theatre life and wanted to get back to it. I have always been interested in the Assisting roles in theatre and I decide it was time to explore it. It was very sad to leave an excellent Urology department but to develop myself further; it was time to move on. The move was to Manchester Royal Infirmary main theatre to join the Emergency Theatre team and the National Organ retrieval Service (NORS) retrieval team. This position would give me the opportunity to train as an assistant in theatre and experience new types of surgery to me such as Max Fax, Transplant and Vascular.

I completed Advanced Scrub Practitioner (ASP) part1 at this time

February 2016, I took up the position of Surgical Care Practitioner in Urology at Salford Royal Hospital.

MSc in Surgical Care Practitioner (Urology) was competed via Edge Hill University 2018.

I completed my NMP at level 7 at University of Salford 2021.

In 2021 I had the honour to become the augural Chair of the newly formed Association of Surgical Care Practitioners. [CR – Recently handed over]

In September 2022 I joined the faculty of Edge Hill University to work part time as a Senior Lecturer on the SCP MSc course.

Professor Steven Yule is the Chair of Behavioural Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and Director of Non-Technical Skills at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He is an organizational psychologist and Human Factors scientist, and internationally recognized for his research on non-technical skills, patient safety, and simulation in surgery. Current work on the relationship between non-technical skills and patient outcomes, surgical safety in low and middle income contexts, coaching for performance enhancement, and astronaut training for medical event management on long duration spaceflight is funded by National Institutes for Health (NIH) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He recently returned to Scotland after eight years in Boston USA, where he served as Director of Research and Innovation at the STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Mr Michael Moneypenny was an anaesthetist for 20 years and is now involved full-time in education and training. Michael is the regional director (East Africa) of the Centre for Innovation in Medical Education (CIME) at the Aga Khan University. Michael is based at the CIME in Nairobi and responsible for the other two CIMEs in Dar Es Salaam and Kampala. Michael is interested in using simulation-based learning to apply a human factors approach to optimising health and care systems as well as human wellbeing. 

Professor Bryn Baxendale is a Consultant Anaesthetist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH). His clinical work is primarily covering emergency, major trauma and vascular surgical services. He helped design the Trent Simulation & Clinical Skills Centre at NUH and has been Director of this regional facility since it opened in 2004. In 2009 he was appointed as an Honorary Professor of Clinical Simulation at the School of Psychology, University of Nottingham. He became the inaugural President of the Association of Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH) from 2009-14, which is now the leading UK organisation addressing the use of simulation to enhance professional training and patient safety in healthcare.  He is the Clinical Lead for the MSc in Quality and Patient Safety Improvement at the University of Nottingham.

He has current national roles with Health Education England (HEE) and the Royal College of Anaesthetists related to the strategic implementation, quality assurance and evaluation of simulation-based and immersive learning technologies within healthcare. He is interested particularly in the development of individual, team-based and organisational resilience and exploring how systems design (Human Factors) can influence staff performance and well-being. He helped co-author the national strategic vision for simulation and immersive learning technologies in health and care, and his latest work at a national level with HEE has focused on implementing the strategy to support specialty training recovery and reform, enhancement of placement capacity, and initiation of a national faculty development programme relevant to educators, practitioners, technicians, and education managers.

Dr Paul Sadler is the Regional Postgraduate Dean for the South East, and the Local Postgraduate Dean for Thames Valley and Wessex. Paul spent over 16 years in the British Army before he moved to work as a consultant in intensive care medicine and anaesthesia in Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. During his military and NHS career, he has undertaken many educational and leadership roles as tutor, clinical director, programme director, local advisor, director of education, and deputy medical director, before becoming a postgraduate dean in late 2018. He undertakes national lead dean roles for Surgery, Professional Support and Wellbeing, Patient Safety and the Extended Surgical Team programme. He continues to be an active clinical teacher and clinician.

Helen is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, a Consultant Anaesthetist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Associate Dean for Simulation and Patient Safety at NHSE-Thames Valley.

She is the Director of OxSTaR, the University of Oxford’s simulation and patient safety research centre, (www.oxstar.ox.ac.uk ). Helen has led and supported many safety incident investigations in the NHS and has delivered national training programmes in systems-based incident investigation. She was a founding executive member and a past president of the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare in the UK and provides expert input for national committees in patient safety and human factors training, the Foundation Curriculum and the Safe Anaesthesia Liaison Group. She currently leads the Human Factors module on the Masters in Surgical Science and Practice in the University of Oxford.

Her research interests include human factors and simulation-based education in healthcare with current projects focused on system based approaches to safety in primary care, human factors in low to middle income healthcare settings and the use of virtual reality to train healthcare professionals.

After the death of her daughter, Beth, in a medical incident Clare has worked with the NHS, Private sector and the Clinical Human Factors Group to tell Beth’s story and support learning around the importance of Human Factors training for everyone who works with patients in the NHS and beyond. Clare is a passionate Patient Advocate understanding that often patients and their families do not have clinical knowledge which results in them not knowing the questions they can or should ask in various situations.

Gareth is an Aortic Dissection survivor. During his recovery he connected with other patients, who quickly realised that misdiagnosis of Aortic Dissection is a patient safety issue causing many unnecessary deaths each year. As Founding Chair of the UK national patient charity, Aortic Dissection Awareness UK & Ireland, Gareth oversaw the launch of the global THINK AORTA campaign, a patient-led partnership of two Royal Colleges, two surgical Societies and two cardiovascular charities, to improve diagnosis in acute Aortic Dissection.

In 2016, when Gareth suffered an acute Aortic Dissection, prompt diagnosis via an immediate CT scan and rapid transfer to a specialist Aortic centre for surgery ensured his life was saved and his Aorta surgically repaired. Since discovering that most patients are not so fortunate, Gareth has made it his mission, through the work of the charity and THINK AORTA, to support affected patients and their families; raise awareness of Aortic Dissection; educate healthcare professionals; and drive change in national healthcare systems in order to improve diagnosis, care and outcomes for patients like him.

Prior to his Aortic Dissection, Gareth led global technology-enabled change programs in the pharmaceutical industry, before moving into a FinTech leadership role working with some of the world's largest banks. He graduated with an MSc. from the University of Oxford and is a Chartered IT Professional.

I am a Vascular Surgery Registrar based in the West of Scotland and have a special interest in improving surgical training.

I am currently out of programme completing a Doctorate in Cognitive Load in Surgical Training within the Saberlab at the University of Edinburgh, supported by the RCSEd and the Vascular Society. This entails utilising audiovisual recordings to assess surgical performance and analysing data from non-invasive physiological sensors placed on surgeons to assess their cognitive load during procedures. If we can identify modifiable factors which can improve or worsen surgeon cognitive load, we can pre-empt, minimise, or avoid cognitive overload. This will lead to better surgical performance and training, robust operating theatre safety standards and improved patient outcomes.

Manoj Kumar is the Education Lead for the Patient Safety Group and Course Director for the Team-Based Quality Reviews (TBQR) Course at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, where he also serves as a Regional Surgical Ambassador. He is a faculty member and Convenor for the Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons (NOTSS) course. He is a Consultant General and Upper GI Surgeon and Associate Director of Medical Education at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Manoj is the Clinical Lead for NHS Education for Scotland’s Team-Based Quality Review Programme, which aims to strengthen safety reviews and promote organisational learning across health and social care. He is also Course Lead for the MSc in Patient Safety and Clinical Human Factors at the University of Edinburgh and a long-standing ambassador for the Clinical Human Factors Group. His work is underpinned by a strong academic foundation in safety science and Human Factors, including a Master’s in Patient Safety: A Human Factors Approach from the University of Aberdeen, completion of the Scottish Quality and Safety Fellowship, and executive training from Harvard Medical School’s AI in Health Care: From Strategies to Implementation programme. Manoj is an Intercollegiate FRCS and MRCS examiner in General Surgery and serves as External Adviser for the Scottish Academy. He has also contributed to national policy through previous roles on the Scottish Government’s Duty of Candour Legislation Advisory Group, National Clinical Lead for Healthcare Improvement Scotlands’ Scottish Mortality and Morbidity Programme and the Health and Medical Law Subcommittee of the Law Society of Scotland.

Mr Richard Steyn is the past Honorary Treasurer of the FPHC.  

Mr Chris McEwan has served as a Councillor on Darlington Borough Council since 1999, holding several post including Children Services, Resources and Lead for Economy and Regeneration. In terms of day job, shortly after completing a degree in Economics he joined the NHS, originally through the finance route, and undertook a number of senior roles over the last 25 years. He left the NHS in early 2017, with his last assignment being within a Commissioning Support Unit as Head of Service for Continuing Health Care across the north of England working for a number of CCGs. Chris has worked as a Local Government Association Peer Member since 2007, latterly, and since leaving the NHS, undertaking a number of Prevention Matters assignments. Chris is currently Deputy Leader of Darlington Borough Council (and lead for economy) and also Chair a large primary Care network as a Lay Chair. Chris also has an interest in Obesity nationally and internationally and has undertaken work looking at the links between Obesity and Productivity and impact on upon the economy, particularly for the Tees valley.

Helen's passion for improved patient safety is informed by personal family insight into the impact of unsafe care and the ineffectiveness of organisational responses to learn from error.

Helen is an experienced leader in organisational effectiveness and transformational change. She has held leadership roles in healthcare in the UK and the WHO, the National Patient Safety Agency, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Parliamentary Health Services Ombudsman and the Charity Commission.

Helen’s previous leadership roles in patient safety include, as Director of Operations of the National Patient Safety Agency, designing the first patient safety infrastructure and policy framework for the NHS in England, and Director of the National Reporting and Learning System. At the WHO, she held a range of roles, including partnership and patient safety programme management and executive lead of the global ‘Patients For Patient Safety’ programme.

I am an Obstetrics & Gynaecology trainee based in South-East Scotland with an interest in gynaecological oncology. I have an ongoing interest in medical education having completed a Masters in Health Professions Education during my training, where I focused on the roles of simulation training. 

I am currently out of programme completing the Scottish Clinical Leadership Fellowship (2023-2024), hosted by both the RCSEd and RCPSG, and I look forward to working with the Patient Safety Group to bring these interests and ideas together to improve collaboration within our working teams as well as patient experiences and outcomes.

Dr Anna Forbes is a Registrar in Prehospital Emergency Medicine, Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia currently working at Kings College Hospital, London and Essex and Herts Air Ambulance Trust. She has a keen interest in patient safety and human factors in both in hospital and pre-hospital settings.

Dr Stuart Braithwaite is a full-time Doctor & Technical Crew Member (Winch Doctor) aboard a North Sea Search & Rescue helicopter. He has prior experience in Anaesthetics, Critical Care and Emergency Medicine. He has spent time working in New Zealand in the Emergency Department and as a HEMS Doctor. Stuart has been involved with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) for over twenty years as All-Weather and Inshore Lifeboat Crew. He has also held positions on the Scottish and International RNLI Flood Rescue Teams. He is a Medical Adviser for the both the RNLI and the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) UK and an instructor for BASICS Scotland. He is a Crew Resource Management (CRM) Trainer of helicopter pilots and technical crew with a strong passion for Human Factors and Non-Technical Skills. In his spare time he enjoys running, cycling and wild swimming.

Mr Chris Sanderson is Head of the College’s Centre in Birmingham and has responsibility for policy and public affairs, external relations and stakeholder engagement. Chris also works closely with the College’s Professional Standards Committee and International Postgraduate Deanery.

Mr Craig Brodie is the Marketing and Communications Manager for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s Marketing and Communications team.