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Imran Chati has a unique role in his Foundation Trust - relationship manager. He supports psychiatrists from the moment they receive a job offer and throughout their career at Lancashire and South Cumbria Foundation Trust. He has written this great blog post for Thrive in Psychiatry.

Although my role at LSCFT is primarily Head of Medical HR, there is an important addition to the role which our Trust has supported in embedding in recent years, which has led to a real impactful change in support for our psychiatrists.

We’ve introduced and added relationship management as part of the medical HR function, predominantly to support overseas doctors joining the Trust having a settling experience and appropriate pastoral support during a period of real change and turmoil for them.

Essentially we wanted to address the question of ‘who cares for the people who care for our communities?’

Relationship management in action

Any doctor joining the NHS from overseas experiences a huge life changing event with many aspects of their life that suddenly need adapting to - including a change of country, change of job, change of accommodation, change of culture and that’s before they’ve even started in the NHS!

Within our Medical HR team and my role, we provide a bespoke service to each doctor as part of our approach to recruitment.

We provide informal contact via easy to access channels (such as Whatsapp) prior to their arrival, and answer questions about visa applications and arrival expectations.

Careful planning is put in place jointly with the doctor, to support arrival, initial accommodation, orientation with transport system, opening a bank account and navigating pre-employment checks by our team.

Being available to answer queries in that initial period outside of working hours or at weekends, can sometimes make the difference for colleagues. The role even stretches to organising house viewings and attending those viewings which can make the difference sometimes for a doctor who is new and isn’t really sure what questions to ask of the landlord.

This relationship management journey continues as the doctor starts their post, with inductions and orientations planned with the local team where they will be working, and then regular check-ins with them through their initial few months of settling in to troubleshoot any challenges.

A real relationship is created not only between the doctor and our team – and with our Trust. We have found that through adopting a holistic and relational approach as a team, our UK based doctors also report feeling very well supported.

This approach needs real commitment from both Medical and HR leaders too, which we have in the Trust, it also requires supportive colleagues within my team who are part of this workstream, which I’m very fortunate to have, as it really is a team effort. 

Critical to retaining doctors

Our Chief Medical Officer and his team recognise this is a critical cog in helping to retain our doctors and allowing them to thrive in their roles. The feedback on the impact from individuals really is powerful and motivating for us.

Many of these individuals are now in formal leadership roles in our organisation, as Consultant but also as SAS doctors.

Whilst we have been successful in recruiting increasing numbers of Consultants, I wanted to draw attention here as to how much we value and support our SAS doctors as leaders.  

The Trust support their development in internal leadership programmes, and they are also supported in accessing external courses, management and leadership fellowships, mentoring, and coaching.

We have helped develop an appreciative culture within the organisation, with Trust conferences for Psychiatry, Medical Education and SAS doctors culminating in awards presentations.

As well as supporting colleagues through the Portfolio Pathway, the Trust have increased its Specialist Psychiatrist roles significantly in the last year.

Moving forward we are keen to join the ‘SAS six’ movement. SAS doctors are valued leaders across the Trust, and we are proud to have supported so many of these colleagues when they first joined the NHS through the relationship management approach I have described.

Inspiring others

On a personal level, I feel a huge amount of satisfaction and pride at being in this important role which supports and impacts on so many lives.

To support people compassionately when they’re at their most vulnerable is something that’s really close to my values and belief system.

To know it has the impact it does at LSCFT is amazing and hopefully can inspire other Trusts to think along similar lines.