Dr Emma Hyde is bringing person-centred care to her new role as the president of UK Imaging and Oncology Congress.

You only have to speak to Emma Hyde for a few minutes to understand the passion she feels for education and research, and it’s no surprise that this diagnostic radiographer is the new president of the UK Imaging and Oncology Congress (UKIO).

Emma also has an underpinning belief in the importance of the patient voice in healthcare, which led her to become Clinical Director for the Personalised Care Institute in January 2022. All this while teaching as Associate Professor of Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Derby.

How did you become president of UKIO?

Emma practised clinically as a diagnostic radiographer for ten years, specialising in CT and MRI, with her final clinical post at Leicester Royal Infirmary. As superintendent for quality, risk and training, she was already doing “a huge amount” of training, working with students, and teaching on a foundation degree course for assistant practitioners.

“The role really whetted my appetite. I always thought teaching might be something I wanted to do but that really made me think ‘Yes, this is the career pathway I want to follow’”. In 2006, she became a lecturer in diagnostic radiography at the University of Derby, and for the next seven years taught on a range of different programmes related to imaging.

“To start with, I did keep my hand in clinically and did update days each year, which I really enjoyed. But as my career progressed, I became an academic manager and was doing my PhD, so it became more and more difficult to maintain the clinical contact as well as doing the things that I wanted to do. I also had a young family by that point, so I was juggling a lot of different things and something had to give”.

Emma progressed to senior lecturer and assistant subject head, before managing the Diagnostic Imaging, Operating Department Practice and Osteopathy discipline area for nine years. In 2020, she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by Advance HE for her work at Derby and cites her main achievement in that role as improving the department’s research profile.

“When I took over at the University of Derby, we didn't have anyone in the radiography team at that time with a PhD. We now have four radiographers with PhDs, one of them being me, and we have another five radiographers on a PhD programme. So we have a whole team that is now extremely engaged in research and the evaluation of what they're doing, which is a very different situation to before, and it's evidenced by the number of conference papers and journal articles that they present as a team.”

What makes UKIO so special?

Throughout her career, much of Emma’s research has involved bringing together education and radiography. “One of the first research projects I did was around student experience and their transition to the first clinical placement - bringing in educational theories and thinking about what else we can do in the university setting to prepare students better for that first clinical placement experience, which we know is really difficult.”

The result was more focus on simulation to support students in those difficult first months, led by former colleague Professor Naomi Shiner, now faculty director of simulation at Keele University: “What we did very differently was what we call high fidelity simulation. So rather than students practising positioning on each other, or X-raying phantoms, we had simulations where we brought in actors or patient volunteers, and we would use moulage to create wounds, and create a whole scenario which the students could immerse themselves in.”

Alongside her desire to improve the student experience, a strong focus of Emma’s research has been on improving the experience of patients. “One of my reasons for going into the university was because I realised that I could affect more change by working with student radiographers and influencing the next generation. In a clinical department you're only dealing with the people that work in that department, whereas when you're teaching cohorts of 40 or 50 students, you obviously have a lot greater reach. It's all about trying to make things better for both students and patients.”

In her work as a radiographer, she firmly believed that the caring side of the role should have equal status to the technical side. “I never saw it as somebody else's job to do that. I imagined that it was my mum, or my grandma or my husband or my child, and thought about how I would feel if I saw one of them needing some help and not getting it, and I always prided myself on never being able to leave a patient uncomfortable, cold, needing a pillow -  whatever it might be. Yes, we have a big technical focus, but we also need to care. That's fundamental to our role.”

What can we expect from UKIO 2024?

Emma’s role at the Personalised Care Institute (PCI) for one day a week comes at a time when there is growing interest and research in how both the individual and the carer benefits from a more personalised approach.

“I'm using the term ‘person-centred’ deliberately to reflect the fact that I'm trying to move away from calling people patients because I think that's quite a reductionist way to refer to individuals. Using the word ‘person’ helps us to remember that they are a person, a human being with their own values, beliefs, and the right to be treated with dignity and respect.”

She also believes that AI could help realise some of the benefits of personalised care: “Some of the time-saving advantages that we get from AI might actually give us the time to care that we need as a profession - give us back some of the time to do that.”

The PCI has a wide range of free educational resources, including a new suite of virtual patient avatars, to help healthcare professionals introduce more person-centred care into their day: “The idea is that you can pick up hints, tips and ideas, about ways to have conversations with people during your episode of care, that make it personalised for them, that responds to their needs, and gives them dignity and respect.

“If we can empower people to take the time to care, then the research shows that we will have happier staff who are able to better care for their patients.”

Why should radiographers be interested in personalised care?