Meet the Team Kelly McGuffie

Ceri Butler (left) and Kelly McGuffie (right) are both part of the Dragon's Institute Team

Meet the Team Kelly McGuffie

We want to introduce you to the people behind our three teams as they work hard to bring change to our health care services. Kelly is Programme Manager of the Dragon's Heart Institute.

Tell us a bit about your role?

I am currently employed as a Programme Manager within the Dragon's Heart Institute based within the Shaping Change team. The Dragon's Heart Institute delivers training to health and care future leaders and we prepare teams to scale their solutions across their system and the wider world. We join the dots between world-leading ideas and the health and care frontline, between innovators in industry and within the NHS, between ingenuity and its implementation in society.

What were you doing before you came to this role?

I've recently left the British Army after serving for 22 years. I spent seven years in the Royal Artillery which included firing large guns and I then transferred into the Royal Army Medical Corps where I was employed as a healthcare leader, medical operations officer and medical planner. I have been deployed on formal operations to many places including Bosnia as a civil/military liaison officer providing humanitarian aid, Northern Ireland as an operations officer, Iraq where I assisted in training the Iraqi Border police in security operations, and Afghanistan where I was employed as the second-in-command of the Bastion Role 3 Hospital. One of my most interesting roles was working with the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps where we trained to respond to World War 3 and my role was to deliver the medical plan for this eventuality. In addition to this, I have lived in Germany and been deployed on exercise to the US, Canada, Norway, France, Poland, Belgium, Austria, Gibraltar and Croatia. I have a passion for people and maximising potential. After leading soldiers and military clinicians in many different environments, I have a wealth of practical experience in trying to get the best out of people both as individuals and as a team, no matter where we find ourselves. I also have a MSc in Leadership and Management that quantifies this experience. I am hugely excited to be part of the Shaping Change team as it provides an opportunity to bring to bear a huge amount of personal knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am currently preparing to deliver a development event for the creation of the Commonwealth Health and Care Leaders Institute. The purpose of the new institute is to provide skills needed by future leaders for the next health and care crisis and to maintain the momentum of our highly motivated leaders to ensure their innovation and aspirations can be realised. This development event will be the catalyst that brings together talented leaders from across Wales who will be the ambassadors of a new Leaders Institute that aspires to support health and care leaders from across the Commonwealth.

I am also supporting delivery of the Quality Summit in May 23. This is part of the ‘Shaping our Future Through Quality Excellence’ Programme, which is a focus within the IMTP.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I attend coordination meetings both internal to the Dragon's Heart Institute and to external agencies to ensure seamless planning and delivery of our future events.

Due to a huge career change I am also still trying to understand the organisation, its plan and my role within it, therefore, I shadow members of the Improvement & Implementation Team, the Change Hub and the Innovation Team to familiarise myself with their role so that I am aware of current issues and existing plans for development. This will feed into my delivery of training that can meet this demand.

What do you get up to out of hours?

I have a husband and an eight year old daughter who are glad to have me back at home full-time with them. So most of my spare time is spent as a family on big adventures. We love camping, walking and just being in the outdoors. I also enjoy spending time at the gym and maintaining my fitness.