Meet the new team charged with setting the future clinical direction at North EastAmbulance Service.
Under the lead of Andrew Hodge, our director of paramedicine and allied health professionals, the team bring together a wealth of experience in emergency and urgent care.
Together, they will develop clinical and professional leadership of our clinical workforce, developing our capabilities, standards and opportunities for development across our system, ensuring that we’re in a position to provide the best patient care possible to the patients we serve.
NEAS was only the fifth ambulance service in the UK to appoint a director of paramedicine to the Board, providing visible and proactive leadership for our clinical workforce.
Andrew took up the post in May 2023, returning to NEAS after having originally started his ambulance career within its patient transport service in 1995.
On re-joining NEAS, he immediately set to work in building up a new clinical leadership team to help him set the future direction for the clinical and professional practice and transform services alongside system partners to meet patient needs.
His first appointment was Daniel Holland, who joined NEAS as the new deputy director of paramedicine, having spent the last nine years at Yorkshire Ambulance Service. His 16-year career as a paramedic has taken him around the country and has involved leading on clinical development and introducing new systems and processes to improve patient care.
Working with Andrew and Daniel are three consultant paramedics, between them covering emergency, critical and urgent care, and our new head of clinical development and effectiveness.
They are:
Dan Haworth has 24 years’ experience within the ambulance service. As well as working as a frontline paramedic, Dan’s career within the ambulance service has taken him into training, research, trauma and leading on clinical development within the service.
Through this new role, Dan will be responsible for the clinical leadership for all emergency care colleagues, including clinical supervision and clinical investigations.
On taking on his new role, he said: “This role allows me to support the development of paramedic practice across the full spectrum of care, ensuring our clinical staff feel supported, are confident and competent in their roles and are able to develop new ideas and ways of working.”
Like Andrew, Lee Thompson’s new role as consultant paramedic for critical care sees him rejoin NEAS, having left the service to work within the emergency departments at both Northumberland Specialist Emergency Care Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary as an advanced clinical practitioner in emergency care.
Lee’s pre-hospital career first began in the military in 1988, where he trained as a medic with the Ulster Defence Regiment and deployed worldwide with the RAF Regiment. Like Andrew, he joined NEAS on its patient transport service before going on to qualify as a paramedic. He has specialised in trauma since 2012 and, working alongside the Northern Trauma Network, has helped to transform how trauma care is delivered within the North East.
Lee is now responsible for the clinical leadership for our specialist paramedics critical care team, , which has recently expanded to 16, and thinking about the higher acuity practice development for paramedics.
He said: “After specialising in major trauma and emergency medicine for many years, I wanted to return to NEAS to lead change in the delivery in critical care within the North East region. I’m particularly looking forward to developing roles for our staff who wish to specialise in critical care with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes of patients who are critically ill or injured.”
Danielle joined NEAS at the start of July, and will be taking the lead on urgent care for the service.
She worked for St John Ambulance prior to joining Yorkshire Ambulance Service in 2008 and qualifying as a paramedic two years later. Her career took her into several urgent and primary care settings as a paramedic advanced clinical practitioner, which included working with some of the pilot projects that led to the urgent community response (UCR) standard. She has also worked with education providers to develop, deliver and assess qualifications including apprenticeships, which led to her joining Health Education England to help enhance practice placement opportunities across the North East and North Cumbria ICS.
In her new role, Danielle is responsible for the clinical leadership of our team of advanced practitioners and first contact practitioners, who work within NEAS and alongside primary care partners to deliver care within the community. She will also be responsible for urgent care clinical practice across the workforce.
On taking up her new role at NEAS she said: “I applied for this role because it excited me to see an ambulance service role that fully encompassed all four pillars of practice and offered the opportunity to innovate in the delivery of urgent care and influence career development opportunities.
“I am keen to help NEAS develop specialist and advanced practice as part of the career framework to offer development opportunities and provision of high-quality patient care.”
A physiotherapist by background, Clare has responsibility for clinical audit, pathways development, and our end of life and mental health teams. She will also be strategically working with the consultants to help shape practice development through data and clinical information.
Having qualified as a physiotherapist in 1990, Clare specialised in orthopaedics where she was responsible for driving improvements in patient pathways. Her passion for improvement led to her obtaining an MSc in transformational leadership and she went on to manage the Surviving Sepsis project at Northumbria Healthcare, before joining the clinical governance and risk team at Newcastle Hospitals in 2017, with a brief redeployment to occupational health during the pandemic. Before joining NEAS, Clare managed the creation of the Newcastle Clinical Skills Academy which provides quality assured education for health professionals.
She said: “I applied for this role because it brings a new challenge where I'll be able to use experience from previous jobs, with a different professional background, in a different sector, exploring with curiosity and taking opportunities to make changes.
“I hope to achieve great things! I'm the eternal optimist and very much a 'people person', driven by the enjoyment of connecting with people to make a positive impact.
“I want my new NEAS colleagues to get in touch to help me learn about the ambulance service. I have a keen interest in sustainability and take part in events that support our environment. It's important to me that we make small changes for the better where we can.”
Andrew said: “One of my first priorities in taking on this role was to create a leadership team that’s visible and able to support and develop clinical practice within our service through professional leadership and the four pillars of advancing practice which supports practice for all.
“Our clinical workforce brings together a wealth of experience from the worlds of paramedicine and nursing, which have a huge part to play in delivering patient care in the North East.
“We already have examples in parts of the region where we’re able to work closely with our partners to deliver patient care together. With a brand new team in place focused on developing clinical and professional practice to improve patient care, I’m really looking forward to working together with our system partners to make a real difference for the patients we serve.”