WITH a career in health and social care spanning 40 years, the Western Trust’s Chief Executive Elaine Way will step down from the role she has held for the last 11 years at the end of July.
As Omagh’s new Enhanced Hospital prepares to open at the end of this month, the only Chief Executive across the UK to have remained in the one organisation throughout her entire career says she believes the time is right to step down.
“To have kept my word, to have seen the opening of the new hospital now come to fruition,” she said, “I feel that it is the end of an era for me and that my work is done.”
When Ms. Way stepped up to the leadership post in April 2007 she inherited the worst estate across all the Northern Ireland health trusts.
“And now it is the best,” she said proudly, “But those buildings would mean nothing without the wonderful staff that we have across the Western Trust.”
She was appointed the Western Trust’s Chief Executive during a turbulent time for health and social care locally. 
Not only was local healthcare delivery undergoing a whole new facelift as Sperrin and Lakeland Trust dissolved to make way for the Western Trust, but Ms. Way was the fifth Chief Executive in quick succession to take to the helm in the area.
“When I went to visit staff of the former Sperrin and Lakeland Trust in Enniskillen I had this feeling that they were all thinking -- ‘Well, she won’t stick around either’.
“But I was in it for the long haul,” she said.
Ms.Way admits to feeling “overwhelmed” by the prospect of letting go of her ‘baby’ at the end of July.
“I have been there since its inception,” she says, “I have invested so much in this job and it will be difficult to let it go.”
But she will find comfort in the knowledge that, as she puts it, the Western Trust will be in safe hands with her successor, the current Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Northern Ireland, Anne Kilgallen.
Ms. Kilgallen faces many challenging times ahead, as the current Chief Executive knows only too well.
Discussing the annual struggle of trying to ensure the Trust ‘breaks even’, she says she and her staff face a task similar to “landing a jumbo jet on a postage stamp”.
And on the day Ms. Way spoke with the Impartial Reporter, the Health and Social Care Trust had just released its pre-consultation document ‘Reshaping Stroke Services’.
While the document has been met with scepticism locally, Ms Way said the public “should not feel threatened by the consultation”.
“This doesn’t mean anything yet,” she said, “It is just the start of a conversation and I believe that it is a conversation that should be had.
“I am a firm believer that when medical evidence suggests that fewer people might have an ongoing disability or more people would live if we organised our services in a certain way, it is our responsibility to put that out into the public domain and allow us to all have the conversation.
“In the past year or so I have received lots of letters from people in County Fermanagh telling me that ‘our stroke service is wonderful and we don’t want anything to change’.
“I have written back to them saying the PHA and HSCB are working towards looking at our stroke services and how best to provide them here in Northern Ireland.
“This is a matter of laying out the case for change.
“It will be Anne Kilgallen’s job to respond to this, ensuring that we get get the best services that we in the West deserve - I will be long gone by the time the consultation comes out, but our clinical staff will be a part of the conversation.”
The reality is of course, that we are living in changed times now.
And over the the last number of years, Ms. Way has come under increasing pressure to carry out her role with less money to meet the increasing demands on health care.
“The one thing I have always held on to is integrity. I know that some of the things that I say may not always have been well received, but I have said everything in a straight and honest way.
“Some of the conversations I have had, have been particularly hard, such as the changes to the hospital in Omagh.
“As I leave here now I am not saying that everything is ‘fixed’. Health care is going through a period of rapid change, with increasing demands. Nobody in this position could leave an organisation like the Western Trust and be able to say “everything is done”.
“But what I can say is that in my opinion we have a Western Trust which is a very high performing organisation with the most magnificent staff you could find anywhere.”
As the face of so much change in local health care, Ms. Way has found herself at the frontline of many personal attacks in the past.
“People don’t like change,” she acknowledged, “They like what they have got and they like us to add to what they have got. But there isn’t enough money to keep on doing all the things that we have done to date and also achieve new things too.
“It has been challenging at times dealing with a public that feels hurt and feels somewhat disaffected.
“I do describe myself as one of the most resilient people you will ever meet, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.
“There have been occasion at meetings when people have accused me of being a liar. I found that really hard to take. I’m not lying to you, I’m telling you as it is. You don’t like what I’m telling you but I am not going to lie to you. I have always said if you are going to be a liar you will need a good memory.
“I have had plenty of tough conversations in my career. I have witnessed people throwing coffee over our chairman as has happened in Omagh on one occasion, or throwing water over someone else.
“That has been really really tough because there are real raw emotions there. And you just think to yourself: ‘These people must really dislike me’.
“But I feel I have a strength within me that is very much a case of you have got to just do the right thing.
“I think what would be really dishonest would be if I was to preside over something that I didn’t think was going to be safe. I have learned to balance the downside of being personally attacked with the bigger prize of trying to transform services so that they are safe and sustainable.
“I have put a lot of effort into this job now it is ‘my time’.”
As prepares to walk away from four decades of devoted work in the area, Ms. Way confesses she feels in some ways she has been a slave to her career.
“I probably spend too much of my time at work over the years, I do recognise that.
“But I always said I would not leave the West until it was acknowledged that the ‘West was best’. The reality is that the price you pay is you lose sight of that work life balance.
“You need something away from work to keep you happy. 
“I have had to think over the past year about what am I going to do when I leave.
“I don’t want to do a paid role going forward. I am going to do voluntary work.
“I am very active in my local Church of Ireland church, so I will be doing more there.
“I am also a member of two choirs.
“And I have two adult children who are at a critical stage in their lives. I want to be there to support them as they move forward.
“I am going also going to spend a lot of my time doing a really big refurbishment to my home, which is 30 years old. I will be taking all the skills I have acquired over the years from building new hospitals and applying them to life away from the Western Trust!”
Reflecting on her legacy, Ms. Way says she is most proud of her focus on “getting the best out of people”.
“I am proud of my ability to develop and lead teams, and to motivate them and give them confidence and self-esteem.
“I feel I have created a ‘can do organisation’.
“I have enjoyed a great relationship with the Trust Board and with staff on the ground.
“My work has brought me a lot of happiness and I have very mixed emotions about leaving.
“But I have had to be realistic. I cannot be here forever. And in a period of so much change there for the Western Trust, the person who is steering that direction of change needs to be committed to being there for at least five years. 
“I could not give that commitment anymore, so it is the right time for me to go.”