Meeting a... Director of Site Operations
Who are you: Ben Hill. I worked for 20 years in Emergency Nursing, working as an Emergency Nurse Practitioner and Emergency Care Matron at the Royal Surrey. I even worked here at SASH back in 2004/5 in ED as a Senior Charge Nurse and training Emergency Nurse Practitioners (ENP).
For the past seven years, I have been working in a number of roles in Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) for Surrey Heartlands ICB - with my last role before joining SASH being Director of UEC and Designated Winter Director for Surrey. So I really understand surge escalation and the challenged we face as a system.
Summarise your role: I manage three teams within the organisation – the site team, Integrated discharge team (IDT) and also the emergency planning resilience and response team (EPRR). Day to day I support Karen Breen, our COO, with the operational running of the site, ensuring we achieve our performance targets. I work closely with all our divisions and with system partners in Surrey and Sussex on key areas like demand management, surge and escalation, and system flow. I also work with the ICBs to ensure we are compliant with all of our emergency planning core standards, and ready to respond to any type of incident we may face.
What do you find challenging about your role: I love being the go-to person and will always try to make things better for colleagues, and most importantly our patients. Like many of us, I find not being able to deliver the care we would want our loves ones to receive very challenging.
What do you find rewarding: I find team working and seeing people operate at their best to deliver safe care that they are proud of, really rewarding.
What do you enjoy outside of work: I am married to a local GP and we have three children and three dogs - so I don’t get much time to myself! I enjoy cycling, walking, reading and socialising with friends. I am also a sucker for streaming and binge-watching a good TV series.