New trustees join the Point of Care Foundation
23 June 2022
Catherine Dale and Richard Evans join the Point of Care Foundation Trustee Board.
We are delighted to announce the appointment of two new trustees to the Point of Care Foundation Trustee Board. We are joined by Catherine Dale (Programme Director at Health Innovation Network) and Richard Evans (Deputy Director of Marketing and Communications at Blood Cancer UK).
Catherine and Richard are joining our board chaired by Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ. In turn, we will sadly be losing Ceinwen Giles and Sean Elyan who have worked with us for the past 9 years.
Bev Fitzsimons, our Chief Executive, said: “We are enormously grateful to our outgoing trustees, Ceinwen Giles and Sean Elyan, who along with Sir Robert Francis were instrumental in establishing the Foundation 9 years ago. We will miss their wise counsel terribly. However, we were overwhelmed by the amount of interest in our recent recruitment for new trustees. We are so pleased to welcome Catherine Dale who has been a long standing associate of the foundation, and instrumental in developing our patient experience work, and Richard Evans who brings a valuable patient perspective from his work at Blood Cancer UK and previously Diabetes UK. We look forward to working with them.”
Catherine Dale said: “I am really honoured to be joining the Point of Care Foundation Board as a trustee. I began working with them when they were a programme in the King’s Fund. At the time, they were interested in generating more evidence about the methods that make a difference to the experience of care for patients. They had been in discussion with Arnie Purushotham and Fran Woodard in the cancer team at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust about using a method called Experience-Based Co-Design and I was appointed to oversee this ‘Patient Centred Care’ programme. When I told my Mum about this patient-centred work she said, “As opposed to what?” and that question stuck with me. I went on to help develop the EBCD toolkit and design the training still delivered by the Foundation. I am grateful my work with the Foundation has enabled me to make the ‘improvement of patient experience’ my absolute driving value in over 20 years working in the NHS, and I look forward to supporting the team and their work in new ways as a Trustee.”
Richard Evans said: “I am delighted to be joining the Board and looking forward to supporting the Point of Care Foundation with its brilliant work. Having taken part in Schwartz Rounds at Blood Cancer UK, I know the powerful impact they can have, and so am excited to be part of the team working to ensure they have an even wider reach over the years to come. I have spent much of my career working with charities that represent people with health conditions, and this, combined with my own experience of using the system, has given me an understanding of the importance of humanity in healthcare, and so am proud to be joining a charity with a track record of focusing on this.”