The fact that he is currently a medical director at a smaller hospital trust and he has just landed a top job as it is set to merge with a much bigger city trust is not lost on Burton's Magnus Harrison.

He is set to serve as medical director when the trust which runs Burton's Queen's Hospital merges with the much larger one that runs the Royal Derby Hospital. And he cannot contain his excitement for the new role.

His new job under the merger plans would see him oversee a total of 2,000 beds and he is currently setting up a team to which will serve the new combined trust.

And he is adamant that he will be choosing the best people for the roles, regardless of whether they currently work for Derby or Burton.

He has been medical director at Queen's Hospital, Burton since 2015, and will be appointed as the executive medical director should the two trusts merge.

Mr Harrison, 47, who lives in Alrewas, says he will go from overseeing a trust with a total of 450 hospital beds, to one of roughly 2,000.

He said: "The main difference is the size and geographical areas. Going from three sites relatively close together with 400 doctors to the best part of 1,500 or 1,600 doctors on five sites.

"From 450 beds up to 2,000 beds across five sites too. It's a massive step change in what I'm doing in lots of ways.

Queen's Hospital is just one of the hospitals under the trust's umbrella
Burton's Queen's Hospital

"We're setting up the team at the moment, and we're working out the medical leadership structures throughout the whole organisation.

"We're working with the new chief operating officer and the chief nurse. We'll have that sorted by the end of this month, with the medical leadership structure in place.

"I'm quite excited about it. It's just a whole heap more work figuring out how we're going to get everybody in the right places."

Mr Harrison says he is not fazed in the slightest at getting handed the role, with which he said would bring 'a heap more work'.

He explained that he already had a clear idea of ideas he wants to implement across the two trusts.

The main difference he will face in his new role once the two trusts join will be that the increased amount of services that will be on offer.

"The first thing I need to do is pick a team and we need to develop that team to deliver exactly what I want," he said.

"So am I going to pick half Burton staff and half Derby Staff? No, I'm going to pick the right people that I think can do the job irrespective of where they have come from.

A doctor, who has previously held high-profile roles at University Hospital North Midlands and Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Mr Harrison revealed that he might find it tricky to ignore loyalties to Burton, but will appoint the right people in the right role, regardless of their past.

"Will I have a legacy of loyalty to Burton? I live really near here and I was the medical director here, so of course I will.

"Will it be obvious every day? I'm not sure it will, but there will be a level of loyalty."

A final business case is being drawn up for the merger between Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS, which runs the Royal Derby.

Magnus Harrison will be the executive medical director of the combined trust
Magnus Harrison will be the executive medical director of the combined trust

Should the move go through, health services under the umbrellas of the two separate bodies will combine into one trust under the name of University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust.

The Burton trust currently oversees Queen's Hospital, in Burton, as well as community hospitals in Lichfield and Tamworth, which are Samuel Johnson Community Hospital and Sir Robert Peel Hospital, respectively.

The Derby trust meanwhile operates the Royal Derby Hospital, in Uttoxeter Road, and the London Road Community Hospital, also in Derby.

Mr Harrison said that he would be reliant on his colleagues in the clinical lead roles across the hospitals to advise him.

His time will be split between sites, but he expects to mostly be at the Royal Derby Hospital.

A dedicated site medical director will be appointed in Burton, who will oversee Queen's Hospital.

Mr Harrison continued: "I'll have a number of medical directors sitting as part of the medical office team.

"One of those will be primarily based here working with Duncan Bedford who's going to be the managing director of the site here.

The Royal Derby Hospital will share many resources will Burton
The Royal Derby Hospital will share many resources will Burton

"They'll have somebody to go to everyday and then I've just got to work out my commitments across the whole patch and how much time I will spend here.

"We'll have a management team here.

"It'll be a managing director, a site medical director, a nurse director, a HR director and a finance director here for the Burton site, all working with Duncan Bedford, the managing director of the site here.

"The professional reporting, so the medical director here from a medical point of view will still be reporting to me, but will operationally look to Duncan here."

He says it is quite a rare occurrence for the medical director of the smaller trust in a merger through acquisition to be handed the role he had got.

Gavin Boyle, the current chief executive of the Derby trust has already been appointed in the role of the combined trust, with his Burton counterpart, Helen Scott-South taking the decision to retire after more than 40 years with the NHS.

Mr Harrison said that he is excited at the prospect of working more closely with Mr Boyle, a man he says he "gets on well with", having experienced a number of meetings and discussions with across the past 18 months.

The new set up of executives will be based around unitary, according to Mr Harrison.

Gavin Boyle will become the chief executive of the proposed combined trust between Burton and Derby
Gavin Boyle will become the chief executive of the proposed combined trust between Burton and Derby

"I will be culpable for finances as much as the finance director is for quality, so we each share each other's portfolios," Mr Harrison explained.

He concluded by saying that the sky really is the limit for the combined trust, with the first target to achieve the highest rating from quality monitoring watchdog for health bodies, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

He said: "For me, the exciting bit is that I will be part of the custodianship of a huge NHS body, looking after a million people.

"I want the best possible care for those people and that will drive me.

"If we talk about personal ambitions, I want us to be an outstanding organisation from a CQC point of view, I don't think there's anything more positive probably that would be recognised.

"There are other examples where this has happened in merger organisations, for me I've certainly got an ambition and I think looking across the other acute trusts in the Midlands and the East, if we were to be rated outstanding, we’d probably be the first, so I'm quite keen to push that."

The Burton and Derby hospital trusts merger so far

Planning documents for the proposed merger were submitted at the end of 2017.

Earlier, in June 2017, it was announced at a Healthwatch meeting that the outline business case for the partnership of the organisations, with a recommendation to merge, was approved.

At the Healthwatch meeting it was confirmed by bosses from both respective trusts, Helen Scott-South from Burton and Gavin Boyle from Derby that the A&E department would not close.

A new trust will be formed, should the current plans go ahead, under a new combined title, the ‘University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust’.

The chairman will be John Rivers, the current chairman of both Derby and Burton trusts, and chief executive of Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Gavin Boyle, will take up the same role at the new trust.