We’ve recently welcomed two new colleagues to our Trust who are working with teams to improve our diagnostic and radiology services.

Chrissy Zelenyanszki is our Programme and Service Development Lead for Community Diagnostics, while Imran Ellahi, is our Radiology Improvement Director.

Read more about Chrissy and Imran, and what they plan to tackle first, below.

Chrissy Zelenyanszki (above)

“I’ve worked in adult screening for many years, with a strong focus on improving staff and patient experience while maximising available resources, often through finding new and innovative ways of working.

I'll be overseeing delivery of our community diagnostic programme, acting as the link between our teams and our partners to bring it all together. I want to reduce the isolation that can exist between service areas so we all work together to give a better patient experience.

I’m passionate about providing the best possible care to all patients, particularly those who fall under the nine protected characteristics. During my time working at InHealth, a specialist provider of diagnostics and NHS partner, I led a collaborative project to improve breast screening for patients with a learning disability. Our work was recognised with an award from the British Institute of Radiology.

Our community diagnostic centres will help us to reduce health inequalities across our local populations.

In my time at our Trust I have already seen lots of passion, commitment and expertise from colleagues and am looking forward to working together to deliver a great service for our patients.

And something about me outside of my work – I’ve just achieved a yellow belt in Krav Maga, a form of martial arts. I had never taken part in any martial arts before I signed up last year.”

Imran Ellahi (above)

“I joined our Trust from NHS England where I worked on elective and diagnostics recovery. My role here is to work with our Radiology team on a transformation programme and then help them make it happen.

There’s more we can do to improve our day-to-day work, and this will be a big part of my role. We want to get waiting times down further for our patients, and sustain this, so one thing I’ll be doing is looking at how our surgery colleagues have maximised theatre capacity, then setting up a similar model in Radiology. This will help ensure we’re using our scanners as effectively as we can.

It’s a really exciting time in radiology; there has been a big investment in our community diagnostic centre at Barking Community Hospital, and we’re playing a key role in developing our future workforce with the North East London Imaging Academy being based at King George Hospital.

Everyone I’ve met so far has been really welcoming. They’ve been open about the challenges we face and supportive of making the necessary changes which will benefit our patients and staff. I’m excited about putting Radiology at the heart of our Trust’s improvement journey.

Aside from work, in my spare time I love watching cricket, especially the Ashes, watching live music, and trying to keep my house plants alive.”