Magda Smith (above) leaves our Trust this week to start a new role as Group Deputy Chief Medical Officer at Barts Health, which we have been working in collaboration with since the height of the pandemic.

It’s a return of sorts for Magda, who started her training at Barts around 40 years ago. She has spent more than 25 years of her career at our Trust, including the last three as our Chief Medical Officer (CMO), helping to steer us through the pandemic.

She said: “I didn’t ever think I’d be a CMO, a job which I found very rewarding. Nor did I expect to leave a trust I’d been in so long, however, the opportunity has arisen and it will be a completely new experience for me.

“I’m excited about moving, there’s always work to be done and it’s an interesting time of change across the whole of north east London.”

Magda, a gastroenterologist, has kept up her clinical practice while taking on a series of clinical leadership roles at our Trust, and will return to keep running her clinics.

It’s only down to a comment from a physics teacher than meant she ever considered becoming a doctor, Magda had planned to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a nurse, until the teacher told her parents she’d make a better doctor!

She added: “I have no idea why, but it led me down a path to becoming a doctor. I’ve always seen becoming a doctor as a vocational career, I love that direct interaction with patients.

“As I developed more of an interest in clinical leadership roles it became more challenging to keep seeing patients, however, once a clinician, always a clinician! For me, seeing patients helps me see the bigger picture of why I do what I do, and keeps me grounded. And while some patients you see once, treat and discharge, I’ve been monitoring some of my patients for years. You get to know them, and their families.”

Having trained at Barts, Magda spent some of her early career at the former Oldchurch Hospital, before working in Birmingham, at St Mark’s and the Royal London, before returning to Oldchurch and our Trust. During her time with us she’s seen Queen’s Hospital go from design to reality, and the many changes across our hospitals, even before Covid-19 made us rethink all our services.

She added: “I remember the small number of theatres on the original plans for Queen’s, until some of our clinicians spoke up and it was increased. People asked how we’d fill them! That’s certainly not an issue now, and we wouldn’t be able to have done so well at recovering our services following the pandemic without them.

“The pandemic has been like nothing I’ve ever seen in my career; or expected to. Two years on it’s hard to remember the devastation during the run up to Easter 2020, when the first wave hit, and how scared people were. I am very proud of how we responded to each stage of the pandemic.

“It’s been a privilege being an executive at our Trust – I’ve got to work with different people, build trust and relationships and had a chance to help shape things. For me, it’s the people who have made the difference, the team at BHRUT are amazing. I’m excited for what’s to come here, and at Barts, and I’ll continue to be invested in both organisations.”