Appointment of Chair of Board of Trustees - Graham Hodgkin
The Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of Graham Hodgkin as Chair of its Board of Trustees.
Graham commented: “I am both thrilled and honoured to be appointed to the Board of Trustees for the David Nott Foundation. As Chair, my aim is to support the evolution of the charity and to help enhance the scale and impact of its operations. It is a sad fact that conflicts and natural disasters will continue to occur across the world, all with far-reaching humanitarian consequences. As the only charity dedicated solely to teaching and training surgical skills in austere and hostile environments, our mission is both clear and compelling. It will be a genuine privilege to play a part in ensuring that the Foundation continues to help doctors in these disaster zones to provide the best possible care to their patients and that David and Elly Nott’s vision of a global network of medical professionals is both realised and sustained.”
David Nott added: “Elly and I are delighted that Graham has joined the David Nott Foundation as Chair of our Board of Trustees. His experience growing London Air Ambulance and in finance, management and governance mark him out as an exceptional addition to Foundation’s team. We all look forward to working with him as we deliver much-needed surgical training in conflict and disaster areas worldwide.”
An experienced leader, Graham has held a number of executive and non-executive roles across the financial services, charity and social enterprise sectors. He has founded his own independent consultancy business and is currently an interim executive for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation; a non-executive Director for Resonance Ltd; and sits on the Advisory Board for City Mental Health Alliance.
Previously the Chief Executive Office at London’s Air Ambulance, he led the successful transformation of the advanced trauma team charity, culminating in the acquisition of a much-needed second medical helicopter for London. He was also a Director of the Association of Air Ambulances and a Trustee for the national AAA charity.
Prior to that, Graham was a Managing Director and UK Country Head for Global Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, where he led a variety of client-facing businesses as well as being heavily involved with their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. During the last phase of his DB career, he designed and managed their innovative £10m Social Impact Investment Fund of Funds.
Syria HEST July 2019
The team has recently returned from their latest mission to Syria. With 46 airstrikes occurring since April on healthcare facilities, the most dangerous place to be in Idlib is certainly a hospital. With many hospitals now out of action, millions of people have been left without access to healthcare facilities and doctors have been left to face the challenge of saving lives without losing their own.
In order to confront this problem and the worsening conditions of patients, the Foundation’s Hostile Environment Surgical Training (HEST) Faculty comprising David Nott, Ammar Darwish and Mounir Hakimi recently delivered a HEST course in the Dr Mohamad Wassim Maaz Hospital near Bab Al-Salameh on the Turkish-Syrian border. Their objective was to deliver the course to 24 surgeons and general practitioners from Idlib, in partnership with Syria Relief and the Independent Doctors Association, to improve their skills in emergency trauma surgery, with a specific focus on how to treat blast injuries and gunshot wounds.
Intensifying airstrikes and destruction are slowly forcing everybody towards Idlib city. The only defence they have is to be prepared. The HEST course has aided this in equipping the surgeons and general practitioners with the skills necessary to tackle the increasingly life threatening injuries and rising population, allowing them to significantly improve the outcome for their patients.
The settings where HEST is taught rule out cadaveric teaching, so the Foundation’s whole body simulator was employed for training. Now with its legs removable, enabling faster and cheaper transport, the impact that it made on the quality of training and the ease with which the Faculty could demonstrate anatomy and procedures was excellent. Supporting the simulator was a suite of individual models of organs, blood vessels and key anatomies with which the students could train. The Faculty also trialled two new commercially-sourced neonatal resuscitation models (Laerdal Medical’s NeoNatalie) and two new neurosurgery models (Delta Surgical’s Rowena), which were a great success.
The Foundation’s Faculty are experts in austere environment surgery and deliver tailored training to a globally recognised standard. With the course having been tailored to match the advanced level of the surgeons and general practitioners and the quality of interaction being excellent, the team came away confident with the exceptional impact that it will have on the victims of the conflict.