Tricia Sloan, Hospital Management Adviser in Cambodia
In order to meet its strategic objectives, VSO needs to continue to attract the highest calibre of skilled professionals. Tricia Sloan is one such professional: she is currently Director of Planning and Performance at Tameside and Glossop Primary Health Care Trust. Next month she’ll be leaving for a VSO placement in Cambodia, where she’ll spend her two-year career break strengthening hospital management teams.
What does your current job involve?
At the moment I’m a director in an NHS Primary Health Care trust (PCT), and I’m responsible for commissioning health services. It’s one of the largest PCTs in Greater Manchester, with nearly 900 staff serving around 245,000 people.
What made you decide to do VSO?
I’d been thinking about volunteering for years, but I wanted to be confident in my skills and experience, and to be rock solid about my personal motives for going overseas. Now is the time: I’ve arrived at a crossroads in my career, and it’s an opportunity to take stock, do something different and decide on my options on my return.
How do you think volunteering will fit in to your career?
Volunteering with VSO can only enhance it. I’ll be working to improve services in a country where there is little or no infrastructure or resources to effect change, so I’m confident I’ll develop new skills and techniques to bring back to the NHS. I’ll also be relying on greater participation at a community and user level to guide my work. While we do have relatively good governance systems for involving users in the NHS, we need fuller engagement. Working in development will certainly provide me with the experience to take this forward.
What do your employers think about your new role?
Tameside and Glossop PCT has been very supportive, and have given me a career break to volunteer. NHS Northwest are fully aware of the benefits of volunteering, and they’ve asked me to do a piece of work on how they can support work in developing countries. I’m also undertaking strategic work scoping the potential for picking up the recommendations in the Crisp Review, which calls for more NHS staff to be given the opportunity to volunteer with organisations like VSO so that they can make a difference in developing countries.
How are you preparing for the next two years in Cambodia?
When I was 18 I moved to Manchester from a small town in Ireland, and that experience has set me very good stead for going to Cambodia! I think Manchester in the 1980s was as different to me then as Cambodia will be to me in October. VSO has played its part in preparing me through training courses, and the rest is up to me to apply it. I’ll have my hard times – I have them at home! – but I have a few personal strategies to work through them.
What will you miss about working in the UK?
I think I’ll miss the professional mentorship I have through a few senior colleagues here in the NHS, but I’ll make sure I keep contact with them whilst away. That contact will be vital for me in applying objective problem solving. Hopefully I'll find someone in Cambodia to fulfil that role too. Like with any new job you bring your experience and expectations to the role, and often the job can be different to what you read in the job description. I'm ready for that - it happens everywhere, not just in Cambodia.