“”Simply put, Richard must posess an unatural number of fingers if you count all the pies that he is involved in! The umbrella term of Acute Care Lead does absolutely no justice to the breadth and depth of his involvement with ensuring that the Acute clinical service continues to run smoothly, despite the significant challenges posed by the pandemic. He is responsible for establishing and embedding the robust safety culture that exists within the department at Torbay, through Handover Safety Briefs, and a well established QSAG process.

As well as this, Richard is one of our Child Protection leads; is our local Gastro link, and has a special interest in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Long COVID, reflecting the breadth of his clinical acumen, and his ability to compassionately manage a tricky patient and parent population.

He is as often found seeking advice as giving it, and his humility is notable despite his wide knowledge base and skill set. This is reflected in his passion to ensure that, as a department, there is regular, active and meaningful peer review and consultation for Critical Care, Complex Cases and Safeguarding. Not only does this provide support and oversight for senior clinicians with complex decision making, but junior members of the team are actively encouraged to participate, present and learn from cases.

Fortunately for us all, Richard loves a spreadsheet, and has brought his impressive, methodological organisational skills to bear on many of the problems that face the directorate. This may not be the most glamorous way to impact on the lives of his patients and colleagues, but the result is robust systems that enable and empower his colleagues to work better, more safely and ensure quality care for their patients.

Finally, Richard uses his leadership roles to actively drive through clinical changes which will be of benefit to patients, their quality of care and their safety. He is always keen to hear about innovation, is good at reading the writing on the wall and adopts change early. He is always ready to share his latest “”””discovery”””” on MS Teams, or make everyone’s lives easier by revealing his latest IT shortcuts. This means that Torbay’s acute service is always developing, changing and re-evaluating, to try and ensure that it delivers the best possible service to its patients.

Thank you Richard, for you excellent clinical care, leadership and innovation. I honestly think the whole department would probably fall apart without all the hard work you do, often behind the scenes.