Meet our UHDB Governors: Val Haylett, City of Derby
Hello, my name is Val Haylett, I am a Public Governor for Derby City, a role that I have always enjoyed since starting it in 2018.
I chose to become a Governor at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton as I worked at Royal Derby Hospital for just under 30 years as a Medical Secretary and the Pulvertaft Hand Unit Co-ordinator.
After retiring in 2015, just one year later, I experienced some medical problems and had to be bought in to the hospital via ambulance, experiencing care from Accident and Emergency, multiple wards, theatres and outpatients. Working here and being a patient, you actually see life from both sides of the fence, some things that you don’t tend to see whilst working at the hospital but being a patient for 18 months gave me a completely different outlook on the service we provide across our Trust.
After experiencing both sides of care at UHDB, I felt that would be good experience to stand as a governor and represent the patients and public we care for in the communities that we serve.
Our role as governors support Team UHDB in a variety of different ways. We have lots of groups, attend board meetings, council of governor’s meetings – members of the hospital can also join these too!
In the board meetings we get to hear from the board about what their plans for the wider Trust are – it is our role as governors to hold the board to account and question how things are going to happen.
Another part of our role is the governor engagement group. Prior to the pandemic, a group of us would regularly visit wards/clinics/offices to talk to staff, patients and visitors about how they were finding their experience in our hospitals – we can hear what it is really like on the shop floor and anonymously report back where changes need to be made.
We couldn’t continue our face-to-face visits due to the pandemic, so we started to do virtual visits via MS Teams – this way we can still keep in touch with staff and see how they are coping. Colleagues at UHDB really have been exceptional over the past two years – it’s amazing how much they have adapted to the ongoing pandemic, still providing exceptional care for our patients.
If you’d like to get in touch, then I'd love to hear from you – you can contact me via email uhdb.govenor@nhs.net