A week with Dr Rebecca Simmons
My Monday morning starts like many of them do – in a meeting at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.These days, I spend at least half my 8.30am-to-5pm office hours in meetings, and almost always end up skipping my lunchbreak.
It’s a frenetic pace, but it comes with the territory as Deputy Director of The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute), a new research institute at the University of Cambridge with a mission to build the evidence base for improving healthcare in the UK National Health Service.
Though my diary is consistently packed with meetings, no day or task is the same. My role involves leading all our business functions, including finance, governance and communications, as well as helping manage our research programmes. That means I connect regularly with people from all functions of the institute. On this particular Monday, I meet with my direct reports to catch up on progress and discuss how we can keep projects moving. We’re studying a range of healthcare improvement topics, including maternity safety, peri-operative care and dementia. I’ve been a diabetes epidemiologist for most of my life, so this is new and exciting ground for me.
I like to bundle meetings together, having seven or eight in a row, to try and keep part of my afternoons free for emails and work. I spend Monday afternoon drafting a job description for a new senior role and reviewing an intellectual property strategy for the institute. Like most Mondays, I’m exhausted by the time I leave the office but I manage to squeeze in a game of squash at 5pm, which always gives me energy and makes me feel better. I’m doing an MBA alongside my job and have to spend a few hours most evenings working on this qualification. Tonight is corporate finance – eek!
On Tuesday I travel to London for meetings with our funder, who is based in Covent Garden, before hopping on the tube to east London to meet with our branding agency to discuss the visuals for a new web platform that we are developing. After a day in London, I’m back in the Cambridge office on Wednesday. We have a team meeting for an hour, where all our staff provide an update on what they have been doing, and we enjoy a scientific presentation about ethnography from one of our post-doctoral researchers. I spend the next hour with the Executive Committee, going over our strategic plans and budgets, before attending a few research project meetings. Back at my desk in the afternoon, I try to power through some emails before finishing work a bit early to spend the evening with my best friend. We cook together and stay up far too late talking. Sleep has always been very important to me and I need about nine hours a night to keep up with the pace of my life. I will be tired tomorrow!
Thursday is mostly a writing day. I’m drafting an annual report for our funder and have to collect lots of information from the team about our progress over the last year. 7,000 words down, 3,000 to go! We also host a small delegation from the Wellcome Trust, who have to come to find out about our research and future plans. I’m impressed all over again by our post-doctoral staff and communications team. They give intelligent and thoughtful answers and I’m proud of the impression that we share with our visiting colleagues.
On Friday I’m back in London to meet with Tore Christiansen and Tine Hylle from the Danish Diabetes Academy (DDA). They’ve invited me to chair their International Advisory Board, which is both a huge honour and also a new type of challenge for me. Having been funded by the DDA as a Visiting Professor at Aarhus University a few years ago, the academy and Danish diabetes research are very close to my heart. We discuss how the academy wants to gain an external perspective and be challenged on its strategic direction. I’m looking forward to meeting the board members in the new year and helping shape the success of the academy. I manage a very desultory run when I’m back in Cambridge in the afternoon and get dinner ready for my boyfriend who is visiting for the weekend. I’m shattered but happy and looking forward to some down time with a new Murakami book and my boy. Maybe next week I’ll even take a lunchbreak!