Aimee Lihou

Head of Quality & Patient Safety

St John Ambulance, Guernsey

Having initially qualified in offshore finance and administration, I joined West Midlands Ambulance Service in 2010 as part of their Student Paramedic programme. Qualifying as a Paramedic in 2012, I remained with West Midlands as an operational Paramedic until I returned home to Guernsey in 2014. In 2017 I took on the position of Clinical Governance Lead for the ambulance service in Guernsey and in 2022 was appointed Head of Quality & Patient Safety.

I am renowned amongst colleagues for my high standards, and passion and drive towards improving service delivery. I have a particular interest in the effects of culture on patient safety, and why healthcare is so unsafe when compared to other high-risk industries. As a result, my MSc in Healthcare Leadership dissertation presented my research into the relationship between ambulance service safety culture and patient safety incident reporting; a subject I remain fully committed to exploring further.

As an ambulance service leader, I feel a personal responsibility to identify and implement strategies to improve the quality and safety of service provision. As such, this is my current direction and focus of travel.