A Day in the Life of Melissa and Stephanie

What’s your name and job title?

Melissa Brighton, Community Partnership Lead South and Stephanie Wauchope, Community Partnership Lead North.

What team do you work in at NHS Supply Chain?

We work for NHS Supply Chain: Rehabilitation, Disabled Services, Women’s Health and Associated Consumables. We form the Community Partnership Team, working closely with trusts to understand, identify, evaluate and support their site requirements in relation to our frameworks.

What does your typical working day entail?

Every day is different! Working across 18 frameworks, we support the non-acute sector by scoping the landscape, attending healthcare events and liaising with various clinical and non-clinical bodies.

We engage with non-acute trusts to understand their current procurement structure, with a view to working collaboratively with NHS Supply Chain. Some of the areas we explore include: highlighting potential savings opportunities, value based procurement, sustainability and innovative products.

We attend healthcare events meeting trusts and suppliers who may not be aware of NHS Supply Chain’s offering. It’s great to have the opportunity to meet face to face and allows us to build a close working relationship moving forward.

We also work closely with Framework Category Managers and Clinical Specialist teams to understand the products, services and current market. This enables us to understand which trusts may benefit from the opportunities that arise. We look at a trusts’ current offering and collaboratively look at opportunities to drive savings and share best practice, all via a compliant route to market.

Working collaboratively with relevant stakeholders to help save the NHS money has always been a big motivator for the both of us. To know that any savings generated go back into the NHS is extremely rewarding.

Melissa Brighton, Community Partnership Lead South

How has the pandemic affected your work?

We are lucky with our role that we can virtually engage with trusts and suppliers. Adapting to this way of working has increased our ability to meet those who are unable to travel. As our role is to support trusts and collaboratively work together, it has been nice to meet in person now restrictions have eased.

Please give an example of a successful project you have recently been involved in and what was the value for the customer?

We are currently supporting the recruitment of sites to participate in the Venus 6 Leg Ulcer Clinical Trial. Venus 6 is a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) funded randomised controlled trial.

Venus 6 is led by Professor Jo Dumville (University of Manchester) and run by York Trials Unit.

It aims to recruit 675 people with venous leg ulcers to investigate the clinical and cost effectiveness of different compression therapies, including compression wraps.

Trial sites are fully supported in study set-up and conduct.

Rigorous evidence on the clinical and cost effectiveness of treatments such as compression wraps will help optimise decision making which is why NHS Supply Chain is supporting this research study.

Melissa Brighton, Community Partnership Lead South

See our Useful Links section for a Nursing Times article we featured in because of our involvement in this project.

What motivates you?

Working collaboratively with relevant stakeholders to help save the NHS money has always been a big motivator for the both of us. To know that any savings generated go back into the NHS is extremely rewarding. We look forward to expanding our customer base, exploring opportunities and seeing what more we can do!