Meet our safeguarding lead, Yvonne Lees

Safeguarding leads are crucial within general practice to work with the whole primary care team to embed safeguarding practice and ethos.

At NPC we have recently appointed Yvonne Lees as our safeguarding compliance lead. Yvonne has only been with NPC for a short time, but she will be responsible for implementing a safeguarding policy across all our practices to protect the health and wellbeing of our patients and staff. We caught up with Yvonne to see how she’s settling into her new role and how her role will support patients and colleagues.

I’m from the North East, having grown up in Ponteland and now living in Longframlington. The North East is a beautiful place to live, you get the best of both worlds with the vibrant city but then the calming countryside only a short drive away. I’m very much an outdoorsy person and love walking and nature so Northumberland is home to me.

I always knew I wanted a career in healthcare from a young age and I studied medicine at the University of Leicester. Although I met some brilliant people while I was at university, the North East pulled me back and I began a placement at Bishop Auckland in surgery and then at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.

I decided that I wanted to have a break away from the UK and I went to Australia to work in healthcare. This was a chance for me to expand my knowledge as a clinician and to also get a perspective on healthcare in a different country. I fell in love with the lifestyle in Australia, being able to finish my shift and head straight to the beach was a massive perk. While working in Australia I was able to acquire new skills, experience a new culture and improve on my personal development as I put into situations I would never have to experience in the UK.

It was during my time in Australia that I worked within general practice, and I knew instantly it was something I wanted to continue when I returned home. I finished my practice training and began working within a career start programme for primary care where I moved around GP practices in Northumberland. It was after this that I gained a permanent position as a partner at Widdrington Surgery in Morpeth.

Widdrington Surgery is part of Northumberland Health and Northumberland Health joined NPC in August 2023; this was how I heard about the role of the safeguarding compliance lead for NPC. I quickly jumped at the chance and applied for the role, safeguarding has always an aspect of healthcare that really interested me as I’m passionate about creating a culture of safety for patients and staff.

One thing that I love about this role is that it’s completely brand new to NPC, so having the chance to get out into different practices and educate our teams on the importance of safeguarding has been a real highlight. Safeguarding impacts all areas of NPC, clinical and non-clinical, so we must embed a consistent safeguarding policy across all practices that put patient care at the centre of everything we do and create a sense of safety for our staff.

As my role is new to the organisation, I’ve been spending a lot of my time getting out and about to all the different practices, talking to staff and our patients and assessing what our safeguarding policy will look like for NPC. It’s been great to learn from staff how safeguarding affects all aspects of primary care, from the moment a patient gets in touch about an appointment to when the patient is seen by their doctor. It’s also been good to hear about their experiences of managing safeguarding in their practice population.

Like I said at the beginning of this blog, I’m very much an outdoorsy person so in my spare time you’ll find me either on the Northumberland coast or walking in the countryside. I also coach the girl’s Alnwick rugby team. The number of girls playing rugby is growing, we have a combined team between Alnwick, Ashington and Blyth. Having played rugby at university myself, I feel really passionate about raising awareness of the sport and inspiring young women in our local community to get involved. We’re always on the lookout for recruits, so if you’re interested in joining feel free to get in touch!

Although I’ve only been working for NPC for a short time, I love the sense of belonging that radiates throughout their culture. I’m looking forward to working with colleagues and our patients over the coming months to implement a safeguarding policy that will enable NPC to provide high-quality care to our patients and our staff.