NHS 75: QA's chairwoman Melloney Poole shares her landmark birthday with the health service

Today, Melloney, who is now the chairwoman of Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust – which includes Queen Alexandra Hospital, celebrates her 75th birthday alongside this most vital of British institutions.

It has become family legend how Melloney’s mother drove herself to the hospital to give birth.

‘I was born in Sheffield, very proudly in Sheffield. The reason, partly, that my mother was so pleased with having driven me into the hospital, allegedly, is because in those days only those that were born in Yorkshire could play cricket for Yorkshire. Of course I was not going to play cricket as she found out subsequently, but it was a really important thing to my father that if I was a boy I could play cricket for Yorkshire.

‘When I was born at six o'clock in the evening, I was one of the very first babies under the new NHS.’

When Melloney was just 17 her mother died following a brain haemorrhage, but the care she received was key in shaping the teenager’s views of the NHS. ‘The brilliant care she had by the NHS was really significant and the compassion then, and the compassion that I see every day now, is so important to the NHS.’

Melloney had wanted to be a nurse but only made it through the first year of her studies at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.

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‘Unfortunately, I kept on fainting at the sight of blood,’ she recalls, ‘which wasn't terribly helpful for a nurse. And it's probably the right thing that I didn't pursue it. But I remember vividly one morning when I was a little late and I was driving far too fast into work, I had a car accident and ended up on the operation table.

‘This fearsome but incredibly determined nurse tutor, who was in charge of all the trainee nurses, turned up at the operation table, looked down at me and said: “Melloney, what are you doing THERE? You should be in one of my lectures!” So that's been a lesson never to be late ever, ever again.’

From there she entered law: ‘I think that is a question of the genes will out, because my mother and her family had been solicitors for about 300 years actually. One of the first firms of solicitors in England was founded by one of my great-great-great-great grandfathers. It was probably inevitable that when I felt that I couldn't continue with nursing that I would look to law.’

On becoming qualified she was the first woman to be offered an article clerkship, ‘as they were called in those far-off days,’ at a firm of solicitors in London, opposite the High Court.

‘It was this really, really Dickensian premises, flickering gas fires, dark smog at the windows, an elderly, senior partner. And he made the leap of faith and offered me the first article of clerkship that his firm had ever offered. I was told when I eventually qualified: "Oh, we never thought you'd pass". The fact that I did was incredible. I was so relieved but after that I continued in private practice and then I became a specialist in corporate and commercial law.’

Since 1993 she has served on a number of NHS trust boards, including Preston Acute Hospital Trust in Lancashire, the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford and the Sussex Partnership before arriving as chair on the Portsmouth board in 2017.

Elsewhere in a high-flying career she has been head of the Armed Forces Covenant Fund, and prior to that she was the head of the legal department for the Big Lottery Fund where she developed the combined legal service department which now supports all the legal and governance matters for the Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund.

Talking about her current role she says: ‘It's rather difficult to describe the role of the chairman. In strict terms, I lead the board, and of course, the chief executive has the far, far harder task of leading the organisation. So it's a division of responsibilities and accountabilities between the implementation of the strategy and the working out of what the strategy should be, which is done by the board. So I'm the chairman of the board and I work very closely, of course, with Penny Emerit, our chief executive.

‘There is no normal day, but today has been a fantastic day because I've been around the hospital meeting various teams, incredible people who are doing incredible things. But then this afternoon I shall be chairing an interview panel for prospective consultants and I know that tomorrow I've got a meeting, for example, with the chairs of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight system. So no day is the same, but every day is of great interest.’

One of the key strengths of the NHS that Melloney is keen to emphasise is its staff. She says that Mark Cubbon, who was chief executive when Melloney came to Portsmouth, and his successor Penny Emerit have been ‘inspirational leaders’ but she also pays tribute to the many who work in the hospitals without being garlanded with praise.

‘There's another really inspirational lady that I met only today, and I won't name her, but she'll know if she sees this. She was a nurse working for us and she lost her husband, very sadly, a young husband, due to a motorcycle accident. Clearly she was incredibly upset and found it very difficult to return immediately to work, but in her Return to Work programme she worked as one of our fantastic volunteers. And what she was saying today was that that experience helped her to grow, helped her to understand, which is the incredibly important thing, how important compassion is for each patient in our care. How the little things – the smile, the additional cup of tea, the ability to walk aside and really empathise with everything they're going through – is so inspirational. It is absolutely incredible to think that we have people like her, who are giving over and above herself in very difficult circumstances, but doing it because it's her belief that other people matter.

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‘And this is what's so true of everyone that you meet in this hospital and in other NHS trusts that I've been privileged to serve, is the sheer commitment of people to think of others.’

Melloney describes working for the NHS as ‘addictive’.

‘It is incredibly absorbing work because at board level it is full of problems you cannot solve, risks you must mitigate, complexities beyond that which you would ever think possible, and also the ability is required to think in so many directions, but still to come back to what is best for the patient in the hospital – that's what's most important.

‘Not being able to solve the problems of systems, or lack of money, or lack of staff, quickly becomes addictive. It is very frustrating, but when things work and when things are improved - when for example this trust got the “good” from the CQC in 2018,’ it had previously been ‘requires improvement’, ‘and a repeated “good” in the 2022 inspection then you know it’s absolutely worthwhile doing – it's an incredible feeling that that is the right thing to do.’

And of course it’s the people: ‘It's the sense of community, it's the sense of family - it's the huge range of diverse talents and ability. It's absolutely fantastic to see the range, and everybody's committed to this family – this really important institution in Portsmouth, and ultimately every single person comes to work for a reason other than making money. It's just incredible and a huge privilege.’

Looking back, Melloney recognises how massive advances in technology have revolutionised patient care, but she thinks that artificial intelligence could bring about more huge leaps and allow the NHS to realise its potential.

‘Unless you don't look back you don't realise how far you've been.

‘What I'm really excited about for the next five years of the NHS is the ability we should have to harness the good that is in artificial intelligence – the real ability to understand in-depth and in detail some of the information we collect but don't necessarily fully analyse or understand.

‘When we can understand populations, population deprivations, stresses on communities which may be deprived or elderly in particular, and when we can channel that information in the right way and provide community care, care on the ground, care through GPs, improve population health, then I think we will begin to see that which was imagined in 1948 – which is the state support from cradle to grave, support through the community, through life, through chronic illness and into hospital care when it is specific and really needed. That's the golden thread in much of the work I would actively support.’