Please keep up your inspiring and helpful work!   Jonathan Richards, Professor of Primary Care and Locality Clinical Director

Valerie is someone who cares passionately for the NHS but isn’t scared to challenge some of its leaders’ thinking in thought-provoking and constructive ways, both in her writing and face to face on topical issues of the moment    George Ogden, GP

OMG – this is fantastic – here is a voice that is totally free of bullshit – Valerie is truly inspirational and I am already applying her thinking to the disaster that is our organisation!    Head teacher, Technical and Further Education College, Sydney

The fabulous Valerie Iles   Roy Lilley, controversial author of the nhsmanagers eletter which has 100k subscribers

Valerie  is one of my gurus   Head of Learning and Development, a Foundation Trust

Anybody who wonders how the Mid Staff failure happened should read Valerie’s book! She dissects systematic failures of NHS organisations in a fascinating manner  Sandra Mounier Jack, LSHTM

Valerie was a font of knowledge and insight and I feel privileged to have had  the opportunity to learn from her. I have used her teachings in my daily work and know they will continue to support me through the trials and tribulations that seem to be an inevitable part of not only the NHS working life but also life in general. The course has been an invaluable opportunity to not only reflect and analyse where I have come from but also how to move forward through appreciation of other views and collaboration to achieve effective change. Craig Wakeham, GP

A simply wonderful piece of writing, important points, perfectly phrased. Prof David Haslam, Chair of NICE

Excellent- practical, useful and thought-provoking  Participant  LSHTM programme

Valerie has fundamentally altered the way I think about clinical leadership and done more than anyone to enthuse me about the challenges we face to deliver high quality in a modern health service    Simon Hargreaves, GP

Really interesting and different, very interactive and vital. LSHTM programme participant

Reviews of Why Reforming the NHS Doesn’t Work:

This is an important and highly timely read – and I’m really glad I’ve read it.
Prof David Haslam
Chair NICE

This inspiring book extends beyond economic and management perspectives. It draws upon anthropology, sociology, political philosophy, moral philosophy and history in its quest to understand the nature of professionalism and how to create a truly quality health service. It is a book which makes you think ‘Yes’! You will want to keep reading on.
Annie Cushing
Professor of Clinical Communication, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London

Valerie Iles has written an important and timely book that seeks to address why serial “reforms” of the NHS have failed to achieve their stated objectives while demoralising and confusing those in the front-line of clinical care.

While acknowledging its good intentions, she describes and laments the pervasive effects of the audit culture, and the straightjacket that data has become. The health service cannot be run by rote, and Iles argues that an effective and humane health service needs to make space for creativity, thought and conversation and in this way harness all the talents available to it. She asks us to consider ends rather than means and to aspire to flourishing at every level of the health service, for patients, for professionals, for managers and even for policy-makers. Furthermore she shows us how.

She ends her book with two fairy tales about the effects of the current rounds of “reform” in England: one nightmare, the other dream. Her book might just help us to edge closer to the dream.
Iona Heath
President RCGP

I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about the NHS. It has the rare quality of asking the right questions – not least the two questions implied by the title. It represents the product of considerable thought and concern to dig beneath constant policy upheaval so as to uncover and ‘name’ the underlying challenges facing healthcare reform. Even those who are not happy with the arguments and analyses the book offers will surely feel that it sets out a fundamentally important agenda.
Alan Cribb
Professor of Bio ethics and Education, Kings College, London

Reviews of Really Managing Health Care:

Valerie Iles has such a sensitive no-nonsense style that she easily succeeds in seducing the reader to accept her arguments about what is going so badly wrong with management in health care …The case studies can only be described as ‘gems’…But perhaps the greatest message this book can give to the NHS, and health care managers in particular, is that change is unstoppable. All organisms must adapt with their environment or die.”
Health Service Journal

“Yes! This is a book that draws heavily on real-life observations with an appropriate balance of theory and pragmatism. It tackles the challenges we all face in our everday work – managing people, change, money, ourselves and organisations.”
Nursing Times

“…anyone who has a part to play in managing health services would benefit from reading it.”
British Medical Journal

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