Executive Adviser
Addenbrookes Hospital

Julie S

00:00:01 My name’s Julie S and I was the Lead Stenographer for the General Ultrasound department at Addenbrookes hospital. But for the last year I’ve had a year’s secondment to the office of the Chief Executive as a Senior Adviser. It has been a big change to go from clinical work to do a much more sort of officey management type role. I feel as if I’m sort of able to influence things a little bit more, and I now know that there’s all sorts of different areas out there that I wasn’t involved in before. So from that point of view I’ve really enjoyed it.

00:00:36 I went to a very old-fashioned Convent school and they just had sort of very fixed ideas about careers and things. I mean I had an aunt who was a nurse and I thought – oh well, you know, maybe I’ll do nursing. But nobody ever came back and said – OK well that’s great, but have you thought about Physios, OTs, Radiographers, you know, all the other things.

00:01:45 I’d done my A-Levels and I – I just opened the Yorkshire Evening Press one night, and St James’s was advertising for Radiography students. So I kind of thought – well why not, that sounds really interesting. I have to say, not really knowing what it was about at all, other than the fact that Radiographers took X-Rays. And before I knew it, a week later, I’d started the course. And then I qualified, and I started working as a basic Radiographer, and it was perfect for me, I just learnt so much. Then I started to think about ultrasound, so a year later I took the ultrasound qualification. We’ve got these sort of Radiography magazine type things and there was an advert for a private clinic that was opening up in Cambridge. And I went for an interview and I got that – that was a Manager’s job, sort of running this private clinic, but ultrasound. And I did that for a year. The whole company actually folded, went into receivership. But for me personally it was a really good opportunity, because I got to run my own department, I got to set up all my protocols, it just felt like a real boost to me personally that OK, you know, it had folded, but everyone was still OK and I was still OK.

00;02:30 All the time I’d kind of kept in touch with people here, because it’s a very small world, you know, if you’re a radiographer, everybody kind of knows you, and when the private clinic sort of folded, you know, I got lots of nice emails from people here saying – you can always come back to Addenbrookes, kind of thing. I did come back, which kind of was a bit strange. I was in charge of the Ultrasound Department, which was great, I absolutely loved it. It was a real lovely bunch of young, ten or twelve stenographers to look after, and then in the September, that’s when I moved on to the secondment job. And when I started I felt that I would always go back to ultrasound because it was only a year’s secondment. Having said that, I’ve so enjoyed the opportunity that I’m going to extend the year’s secondment for six months, and then I’m going to go and do a project management role after that. So I think I’ll probably have to sort of close the door a little bit on the ultrasound role.

00:03:05 I wouldn’t have imagined myself doing the role that I’m doing now, and I wouldn’t have thought that I was a natural leader really, so being sort of in charge of my own department was, to start off with, you know I used to sort of go home and think – oh my goodness me, I’m in charge of the department. So that’s been really interesting, but it just goes to show that actually if – with a bit of sort of making your own luck, being in the right place, seeing an opportunity and going for it, then actually you know being in the NHS can be really fantastic. Some of the things that I think I’ve learnt from my career, are that you have to really believe in yourself, and have confidence in your own abilities. If I think about where I want to be, I could be really a very senior person within this organisation, being able to influence things and deliver the role at a very senior level.

00:04:04 ENDS