Maggie Oldham has been confirmed as the new chief executive of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals after carrying out the role since April as an interim appointment.
She took over the reins following the retirement of previous chief executive Trish Armstrong-Child.
Ms Oldham has more than 40 years of experience working in healthcare with her achievements including leading improvements at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust during four years spent there. She is also a previous chief executive of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
She told a meeting of the board of the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust she was pleased to be back working in Lancashire where she was born and raised, and looking forward to the challenges ahead.
She also praised staff at the hospitals, which include Blackpool Victoria Hospital and Clifton Hospital in St Annes, for their hard work and dedication.
She said it had been “an absolute privilege to have been working here for the last four-and-half months” which had shown that her own personal and professional values were aligned with those of the trust.
She said: “I feel over the last four-and-a-half months I have had the opportunity to really assimilate what some of the core drivers of our challenges are. I feel very excited on that.”
Ms Oldham added: “I am so grateful to all our staff. Our operational front-line staff work day in day out under some of the most extreme challenges. The public sector continues to be under some significant challenges and here in Blackpool they are trying to look after our community in Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre.
“Every day we see fresh challenges and our staff rise to them always. Our staff have a relentless pursuit of improvement and we should always acknowledge and pay thanks to them for what they do.
“I am really grateful for the chance to work here in a permanent way and bring some stability which I know we are desperately in need of.”
Ms Oldham joined the NHS in 1982 on a Youth Opportunities Programme at Booth Hall Children’s Hospital in Manchester, and held various nursing roles before moving into management.
Interim chair of the Blackpool Trust James Wilkie has also now been permanently appointed to that role.
Focus on staff and spending
Hospital services in Blackpool depend on people from 65 different nationalities, and the town’s NHS boss has told of staff fearing going to work during recent violence.
During August there were disturbances across the country, including in Blackpool, as protests in relation to immigration led to outbreaks of disorder.
Ms Oldham said staff were put on standby in case incidents led to multiple casualties but thankfully that did not happen and services were not disrupted.
She said: “It really hurt our staff. We have 65 nationalities represented in this organisation. A few weeks ago I opened up one of our wellness rooms and dedicated that to our first Windrush nurse.
“The very first international colleagues joined us in 1948. There was a change to the national constitution in order to bring national colleagues to England to be able to support the National Health Service.
“International colleagues are part of our very DNA. So the very fact that particularly our Muslim colleagues found it difficult to come to work during that period due to the large amounts of violence and intimidation that they saw, certainly wasn’t lost on me.
“We put as much support around our colleagues as we possibly could during that period. It really fast-tracked some of the gaps we have got. How do we support our colleagues with 18 per cent of staff coming from BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) backgrounds?
“Do we do enough? A staff survey suggests we still have more to do. But having the opportunity to meet and be with people absolutely brought to life some of those challenges for me.
“I have the privilege of working alongside our longest-serving chaplain, who is also our Imam and I had the opportunity to go and visit the mosque. I have met some of our colleagues I would never have met possibly for months and years during that period, and I learnt an awful lot about the diversity that is so rich in this organisation.
“I will continue to develop those links further.”
Ms Oldham also told the board she had joined other hospital chief executives from around the country at a meeting in London with Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
She said bosses were warned of the need for the NHS to balance the books and provide value for money, but patient and staff safety remained the priority.
Mr Streeting also put a priority on providing more hot meals for patients and staff at night time, which Ms Oldham agreed was something “our staff would tell us that is important to them as well.”
She told the board: “What we shouldn’t be expecting is to see any financial let-up. We are going to the end of this financial year seeing the challenges we have got nationally play out across the public sector budgets.
“Which really gave us the opportunity to talk about what is expected of us. The first thing the Secretary of State stressed was the most important thing was safety, and for all chief executives that has to be the number one priority.”
Ms Oldham warned this meant performing well in all NHS indicators, and said help should be sought from better performing trusts.
She added: “We cannot be too proud to go to the best in the pack and ask what are you doing and how are you doing it? And how can we fit that around our population needs.”
She said dealing with flu, Covid and Norovirus would be “at the centre of our planning for winter” while eradicating wasteful spending would ensure services offered value for money.
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