Chris's Journey - Deputy Director of Commercial Services

I joined the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) in 2008 as a student paramedic in southeast Essex, having moved from Glasgow to take on the role.

After graduating university with a degree in human biology and physiology, I was keen to work in a health care environment and at the time EEAST were leading the way in new paramedic pathways.

From there, I moved to north Cambridgeshire where I worked as a station supervisor and then a duty locality officer. I worked in operational management roles for three to four years which allowed me to support the local teams, ensuring staff needs were met, as well as continuing to support clinical delivery in the area.

Following this I worked as a bank paramedic with the Trust whilst I took some time away to develop as a senior lecturer in higher education helping to develop the paramedic degree programme at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge. This role gave me the opportunity to support the development of the clinical workforce in our region and impact on the quality of paramedic education regionally. Following my time at ARU I moved into a primary care role as an advanced practitioner and prescriber within a primary care network. This allowed me to strengthen the awareness of the opportunities for advanced practice and how paramedics and the ambulance service can support this development.

I returned to the Trust in 2020 in the role of head of education, allowing me to utilise my higher education and advanced practice experience to support the development of the education provisions at EEAST. This involved developing various progression routes and education programmes that supported the workforce needs at EEAST as well as working with our external education partners. In 2023, I moved into my current role as deputy director of commercial services. Although this is a less clinically focused position, I’m able to improve on system wide patient care by driving improvements in integration. This can be achieved by working with our Integrated Care System (ICS) partners across the east of England to ensure that patients have access to the right care, at the right time. This can include better access to community services, same day urgent care and mental health providers.

This role also supports the development of the patient transport services at EEAST, ensuring that these are integrated as a core part of the systems way of working, providing essential flow through the health system. Our wider commercial teams support income generation initiatives, which in turn is reinvested in innovation within the Trust. I really enjoy the partnership working with our systems and the ability to look at patient care needs on a larger scale.

Although I have faced significant challenges along the way in my career journey, what has been consistent throughout my various roles is the good will and commitment of the teams at EEAST to do the right thing.

Working for the ambulance service is a great opportunity to impact and improve on the care provided to our community. Whether that be directly in a clinical or patient facing role, or through the hard work of our support services - everything we do leads back to a patient. It is a privilege to provide care for someone when they need it most and being a part of that makes for a great career.