Ruth Silverton

Hi, I’m Ruth Silverton, and am delighted to be joining HEE as a National Enhance Clinical Fellow through the Royal College of Physicians. I’m based in Cambridgeshire and have curated a portfolio career over the last decade, combining clinical nephrology, health professions education and training policy.

I began my career in Yorkshire, where I was born and bred, and was introduced to the complexities of training at an early stage: needing to balance oncology treatment as a patient with my desire to complete my foundation training and progress as a doctor. This challenging start, and experience of healthcare from ‘the other side’ actually inspired my progression into medical education. I initially worked with Hull York Medical School, designing and delivering renal education. Following a move to London I spent a year as a clinical teaching fellow at the Royal Free Hospital. This allowed me to further my own education qualifications, as well as focus on areas of particular interest such as undergraduate assessment and postgraduate non-technical skills such as patient safety, communication skills and clinician wellbeing. Following this post I moved to the UCL postgraduate medical education team, delivering the health professions education Masters programme.

It was during my time in London I became particularly interested in the trajectory of post foundation doctors, and the increase in those not progressing directly into specialty training. Following a local exploration of the factors involved in this decision, I was delighted to work with HEE to explore this further in the form of a national project: The F3 Phenomenon. This work highlighted a myriad of interesting areas, and furthered my desire to be involved in the policy of healthcare and health professions education.

I now work in Cambridge, as a nephrologist and member of the medical school’s professionalism team. In addition, I continue to work on the UCL Masters programme and became the third enhance fellow in September.

The importance of generalist skills for the future of healthcare workforce are clear, and the development of an innovative and flexible programme in enhance is really exciting. All my experiences up to this point have demonstrated the need for the constant evolution of education to acknowledge the changing demands of the population and service, as well as generational shifts and broader cultural, political and financial climates. During my time on the team, I will be focussing on the evaluation of our trailblazer sites. Any new educational offer comes with uncertainty and variability based on local context and those wider climates and I’m looking forward to exploring all these elements, and working with the local teams to determine how the programme can be taken forward.