Caroline Shaw, chief executive, The Christie – Europe's largest cancer centre
In her six years as the head of The Christie, 44-year-old Caroline Shaw has transformed the Manchester-based hospital – nurturing the organisation back to financial health and achieving foundation trust status.
"When I joined in 2005, the quality of care was fantastic but the organisation had financial problems and was known for having maverick and ambitious doctors so I set out a plan to change that," she explains. "I always like to achieve three things each year and in my first year I wanted to attain financial balance, ensure no patient would have to wait for cancer treatment and to become a foundation trust, which we did."
The Christie's annual turnover is now £181m and Shaw anticipates a rise of five per cent in the four years up to 2013/14. Growing financially is part of her five-year strategy, which also includes developing different models of care and further improving facilities.
A £35m patient treatment centre – home to the world's largest clinical trials unit and UK chemotherapy facility – is already open. The Christie is running 400 clinical trials, with 10 to 15 new ones launching monthly and this is predicted to rise by around 20 per cent in the next five years.
Shaw admits the centre is run more like a business than a hospital. "We're big on private healthcare because we're making a surplus from that and we can reinvest it into the NHS," she explains. "We're also developing our research and managing The Christie charity, the second largest in the UK."
During the financial crisis the organisation lost £6.5m of charitable money, which was invested in an Icelandic bank that collapsed. "It was one of the biggest challenges I've faced in this role," admits Shaw. "But we launched a Manchester-wide campaign and we met government officials including Gordon Brown, who was prime minister at the time, and amazingly we gained support to get all the money back. We're probably the first and only charity in the country to do that and it's definitely one of my proudest moments."
The key to success, says Shaw, is balance. For her, that includes getting up every morning at 5am to run for an hour. A mother of two – a boy of 14 and a girl of seven – she juggles family life around her career. Shaw says she saw what was good and bad about healthcare after her father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 11.
"It inspired me to do my midwifery training when I left school," she recalls. "That was back in 1985 and I loved it but
I decided that if I wanted to influence wider healthcare I would have to become involved in general management."
Shaw would like The Christie to become the world's best cancer centre. "I want to offer the best services and patient experience, to lead the way in research and provide education to other professionals in the cancer sector. I want to make a difference to the patients that come through the door."
My inspiration…
Who My mum inspires me. She always says if you want to do something then you can. She decided not to have a career and looked after my dad and brought us up.?She's always been there for us."
Best book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. It's a great, easy read and tells you so much about life. He talks about mentorship and support and it's just fabulous.
Favourite place Hard to choose. I love the Lake District because it's going home but I also love skiing in Val d'Isère. It's because it's about survival and you can't think about work or other issues when you're going down the slopes.
Social media We use Twitter and Facebook. It's exciting but people should be careful because whatever you say and do is being made public.
Saying No regrets. That applies to everything in my life. I want to bring my children up with that. Whatever you do, whatever goes wrong, have no regrets and learn from it.
What can't you live without? My running shoes. Even when I go
off to Europe or America I always have my running shoes in my bag because when I go somewhere new I like to go out for a
15-minute run as soon as I arrive.
