Dr Christopher Wells
Consultant Gastroenterologist and General Internal Medicine Physician North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust
Nominated by: Professor Jane Metcalf, Deputy Medical Director & Consultant Physician
How does the nominee inspire you?
Chris inspires me always to try to improve my personal practice, to not let poor practices go unchallenged and to personally instigate changes. His empathic approach enables me to recognise my own blind spots and change my approach, particularly promoting a harmonious working environment. His unwavering commitment to personalised, compassionate care inspires both peers and juniors to provide the same. His enthusiasm for learning, both personal and providing training for others, also helps to inspire me to go the extra mile. Having a truly interested and supportive colleague to seek out for feedback, particularly when I feel I have not provided best care, is a real way of enabling me to improve my practice and ensure that improvements (my own and system wide) can be instigated.
Contribution to medical practice and impact on care
Chris has been an inspiration as a colleague since he was appointed some years ago. He is universally valued and respected by his patients due to his excellent communication skills and his genuine compassion and empathy for them and their carers. He will always go the extra mile to ensure that those in his care get the very best treatment and experience. He is a truly excellent physician who daily demonstrates his commitment to lifelong learning through his inquisitive mind and reflective practice, sharing his knowledge with colleagues and never being worried about asking for and providing second opinions about difficult clinical and ethical issues.
He is a hugely supportive colleague, the ‘go to’ person for second opinions and as a sounding board for myself and others, providing wise advice and using his coaching and mentoring skills to bring about positive resolution of issues and supporting self-recognition of how our actions contribute to issues. He is enormously supportive of junior medical and other colleagues, identifying and addressing training issues in a supportive but challenging manner, always striving to improve patient and colleague experience.
He is an excellent interventional endoscopist, who regularly trains on local and national colonoscopy courses with the highest positive feedback from participants. He seeks out and instigates service improvements as part of his normal working practices, for instance seeking and listening to juniors' feedback and helping change working practices such as implementing an appointment system to ensure the families of ward patients have easy access to doctors to receive updates about their loved ones health whilst protecting juniors time to reduce working beyond hours.