Clinical leadership

Healthcare in secure environments

The primary care clinical lead role varies across prison healthcare in relation to the type of prison and subsequent service provision, so there are some differences across our services. However, there are two broad themes around the role of the clinical lead which are:

1. Providing oversight of the primary care service in terms of delivering safe and effective care, and
2. Being a role model to develop services and provide support for their teams.

Some clinical leads work clinically on a daily basis, working alongside their team, others will work clinically for a set number of days per week, and use the rest of their time to engage in governance work and function as a line manager e.g. representing healthcare at meetings with the wider prison, undertaking/overseeing audits, Datix, report writing, staff allocation, manage HR issues, recruitment, 1-2-1s etc.

What makes being a member of the clinical leadership team in prisons so unique is the unpredictability from day to day, the opportunity to care for people with a wide range of healthcare need/patients with complex needs, and the opportunity to work within a multidisciplinary team including non-healthcare staff (prison staff) to ensure safe and effective care can be provided.

“It was an opportunity to do something new and an opportunity to put all of my knowledge and everything that I’d learnt into practice which I wasn’t able to do in my previous role very much.”

Catherine
Hospital Director