After arriving at NHS Lanarkshire, director of acute services Heather Knox set about improving A&E waiting times by focusing much of her time for the first two months at Hairmyres Hospital.

She said: “We’ve made very good progress at Hairmyres and can show a real improvement. Monklands Hospital has improved as well and site director Andrea Fyfe has driven that. We still have work to do at Wishaw General.”

Heather added that the visibility of the executive teams at the hospitals has also increased through a number of initiatives in partnership with the staff.

During the last six months NHS Lanarkshire’s new healthcare strategy has been one of the main pieces of work.

Heather said: “I’m heading two streams – orthopaedics and planned and unplanned care. We’ve been doing detailed data analysis with each of the specialities and projecting the number and location of beds that we’ll need over the next decade.

“We’re also encouraging the site triumvirate teams – the chief doctor, chief nurse and services director – to focus on patient safety.

“They need to make sure they can measure and deliver on the ‘four harms’ – cardiac arrests, falls with harm, pressure ulcers and catheter-associated urinary tract infections – as well as on our 10 essentials for patient safety.”