New role to lead the way on long term conditions

Caroline Poole

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust has appointed Caroline Poole as its new strategic lead for long term conditions, strengthening the Trust's community and mental health services.

Caroline is a trained speech and language therapist and has worked for the NHS for 14 years. In this new role, Caroline will be responsible for driving service improvements and improving outcomes for patients with conditions such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), diabetes, asthma and heart disease.

There are around 15 million people in England with at least one long term condition - a condition that can not be cured but can be managed through medication and/or therapy.

Caroline commented: "Having a long term condition can be incredibly difficult to live with and when it becomes worse, people often find they have to go to A&E or stay in hospital for treatment. Whilst we already have a number of effective services in the community, we want to build on our offer and improve local services so that we can prevent more people from ending up in hospital."

Working across the boroughs of Bury, Oldham and Rochdale, Caroline has already started to work with local services, GPs and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to identify priority focus areas for the next 12 months. These include projects to help patients to manage their conditions and care for themselves, using technology to monitor patients at home and improving integration between health and social care services.

When she's not at work, Caroline sings as part of a successful women's barber shop choir and has even made an appearance on Britain's Got Talent.