Mrs Gemma Buttinger
Gemma Buttinger studied Physiotherapy at University of the West of England, Bristol, achieving a First-Class BSc Honours Degree in 2006. Since qualifying, Gemma has worked in South West England but has mostly been based in London teaching hospitals.
Gemma has over 15 years’ clinical experience working within a variety of NHS settings with a keen interest in Senior Health, Acute Medicine and Rehabilitation. Gemma currently works at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as a Highly Specialised Physiotherapist and Inpatient Team Lead within the Senior Health department.
Gemma is experienced in leading and managing a team, using attained certification in Coaching and Mentoring Skills ILM 3. Gemma successfully set up additional coaching sessions separate to supervision sessions within her team. She found a positive response directly from staff, not only addressing a multitude of individual personal and professional staffing issues, but through empowerment of staff members to unlock their own potential to problem solve using key strategies.
In 2022, Gemma was elected BAME Co-Vice Chair; the first AHP within her current Trust. Gemma is keen to be a voice for minorities, enabling inclusivity by networking with a wider audience within the Trust. It highlighted that her personable and compassionate nature would encourage staff to voice their views.
During her career, Gemma has been involved in multiple service improvement projects including developing and improving the local therapy weekend service provision and working collaboratively with the multidisciplinary team to achieve The Quality Mark for Elder-Friendly Hospital Wards through RCPsych.
Reason for applying for the scheme
Gemma has always shown a keen interest in self-development, problem solving and quality improvement even at an early stage of her career. Alongside her peers as a Band 5, they ran a voluntary series of skills workshops at weekends to newly qualified physiotherapists. It was initiated in response to physiotherapy job shortages in the hope that following attendance to these workshops the attendees would have a greater opportunity to succeed in job applications. This was featured in Frontline Magazine in 2007.
Gemma remains eager to learn and develop and applied for the NHS Regional Clinical Leadership Fellow Scheme as it is an excellent opportunity to truly understand how the NHS works and its processes in order to influence the provision of care in the future. Another motivator for applying for this Fellowship is Gemma would like to deepen her understanding of the key traits necessary to become a systems leader and the fundamentals behind how to inspire others.
What is exciting is the unique opportunity to network with Senior Leaders and Stakeholders, not just for brief one-off interactions, but to truly engage with them to influence large scale change.
Gemma is keen to be involved in work on both National and Regional NHS priorities as the NHS continues to recover from the COVID 19 pandemic, but also following the mandate for Integrated Care Systems introduced this year. Gemma looks forward to collaborating with others, focusing on improving the quality of patient care and ultimately becoming an effective clinical leader of the future.
