Deborah Sanders, chief executive of Barnet Hospital in London, has retired from the NHS this month after a 42-year career in nursing and management, flagging her colleagues as her “greatest joy”.
Ms Sanders has worked at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust since 1994, having trained at is Royal Free Hospital.
“Keep patients at the forefront of everything you do and be prepared to be vulnerable”
Deborah Sanders
Prior to her retirement on 18 July, she has reflected on her career as a nursing leader, intensive care nurse and advocate for older people’s care.
Ms Sanders was appointed as the trust’s director of nursing in 2010. Before that, she worked at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the London Chest Hospital.
She was appointed chief executive of Barnet Hospital just over five years ago in March 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ms Sanders is also a board member of the Royal Free Hospital Nurses’ Home of Rest Trust and a trustee of the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability.
She first joined the Royal Free Hospital as a trainee nurse in August 1983, when she would board the specially laid on coach from her accommodation in Gray’s Inn Road to the Pond Street hospital.
“I remember I was really excited to be in such a new hospital. It had only opened seven years earlier,” she said of her experience during training.
“Us trainees were a huge part of the workforce. You had 28-bed wards with two qualified nurses and the rest were all students, and as a first-year student you would be given eight patients to look after.”
However, Ms Sanders recalled the acuity and complexity of patients being much less, and their lengths of hospital stays being much longer.
She said: “Complex drug regimens didn’t exist then; nurses didn’t deliver intravenous drugs and there were no computers on wards.
“We’d wait for the end of the day for the blood tests to arrive on paper and if it was urgent someone would ring us,” she said. “It was a different pace.
“Back then there were no nurse specialists or the breadth or depth of career opportunities we have today,” Ms Sanders noted.
After she qualified and became a staff nurse, she decided she would make it her mission to change elderly care nursing, which she described as a ‘Cinderella’ service: undervalued and often ignored.
However, she felt her voice was not being heard and at the age of 21 she took a step back from nursing, spending two years working as a project worker in a homeless charity.
Luckily for the NHS, she missed nursing and returned, working first on a surgical ward at Barts and then at the Royal Free in intensive care, which had just seven beds, compared to the 50 it has today.
This was followed by a spell at the cardiothoracic intensive care unit at the former London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green.
In 1994, she rejoined the Royal Free Hospital’s intensive care unit, remaining there for the next 12 years, eventually becoming matron.
She said: “I can recall that all I ever aspired to be was a band 7 ITU nurse. I remember watching them and thinking I would never have their clinical expertise and their leadership qualities.”
Over the years, Ms Sanders consolidated her clinical experience with a degree in health studies, followed by a master’s in healthcare governance.
Reflecting on the qualities needed for aspiring NHS leaders she said: “Strive to be a compassionate leader, listen with care to what your colleagues and teams are telling you and act on it.
“Keep patients at the forefront of everything you do and be prepared to be vulnerable. As a leader you want to get things right all the time, but it’s important to also own your mistakes and apologise.”
She became directorate nurse manager for surgery and associated services in 2006 and three years later became divisional nurse director and very soon after director of nursing at the Royal Free.
Over the next 10 years, the trust underwent a huge amount of change – all of which Ms Sanders was directly involved in.
The Royal Free London became a foundation trust, Barnet Hospital and Chase Farm Hospital joined the trust and the group model was launched.
Then, at the start of 2020, Ms Sanders was group chief nurse and covering the chief executive role at Barnet Hospital when she said the biggest challenge in her career arrived.
“Without a doubt Covid was my biggest challenge but my colleagues were just amazing,” she said.
“I might have been covering two jobs, and I was the director of infection prevention and control but at that point there really was just one all-consuming job.”
However, despite the challenges of the pandemic, when the role of Barnet Hospital chief executive became available in 2020, Ms Sanders applied for it.
“Barnet Hospital has really got into my heart,” she said. “I’m so proud of the staff and the brilliant care they give.
“My favourite time of the month is when the new patient experience quotes come out – they’re such a testament to the staff here. I also love that the hospital is such an important part of the community.”
Ms Sanders added that her greatest joy in the role were the people she has worked with. She said: “Some of my closest friends are people I met when I first started out.
“I feel really proud of my career in the NHS,” she said. “It is not perfect, but I think it is a wonderful institution.
“I want the Royal Free London to be the best organisation in the NHS and a blueprint for how group models should work, and I would like Barnet Hospital to lead the way in how we integrate services for patients.
“I would really love for the hospital to be a beacon of how neighbourhood working can really work,” she added, referencing ambitions for neighbourhood health services in the 10 Year Health Plan.
“I also want Barnet Hospital to be the place where people really want to come to work and to be a leader in research into older people,” she said, returning to her passion for older people’s nursing.
“When I look back on what I’ve achieved I hope my passion for elderly care and the ambitions we have at Barnet in this area going forward fulfil the promise I made to myself at the start of my career as a nurse.”
The Royal Free London serves a population of around two million, with 17,000 staff operating from four main sites: Barnet Hospital, Chase Farm Hospital, North Middlesex University Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital. Barnet Hospital focuses on aging well and same day and integrated care.
