GIRFT’s highly respected urology clinical leads have been thanked for their exceptional work over the past six years as they both step down from the role.
John McGrath and Kieran O’Flynn are leaving the GIRFT urology workstream from 31 March 2026, although John will be continuing in his roles as chair of the robotic-assisted surgery steering committee for NHS England and GIRFT and as one of GIRFT’s co-investigators for sustainable care pathway development.
Professor Tim Briggs, GIRFT programme lead and National Director for Clinical Improvement, Elective Recovery and UEC for NHS England, thanked them for their work to improve urology services since they were appointed in February 2020.
He said:
“John and Kieran have worked tirelessly in the past six years, always with a focus on improving the service for patients, for their colleagues and for the NHS more broadly. The scope of the guidance they have overseen in their time as GIRFT clinical leads is to be commended.
We are very sorry to see them step down from the urology roles but thank them wholeheartedly for their exceptional work on behalf of the programme.”
John, now a consultant urologist at the North Bristol NHS Trust, and Kieran, a consultant urologist at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, joined the GIRFT programme in 2020 to take over from Simon Harrison, who retired in 2018.
Their first task was to lead GIRFT’s revisits to trusts, presenting refreshed urology data and looking at the progress of recommendations from the 2018 national report for urology.
Working closely with other NHS England programmes, providers and professional bodies – in particular the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) and the British Association of Urological Nurses (BAUN) – they have gone on to drive and develop a wide range of resources – standardised pathways, guidance documents, best practice case studies and resources for outpatient transformation – supporting trusts and systems to reduce variation and improve patient care.
Kieran said:
"It has been a privilege leading this work in urology and we hope the GIRFT programme has been effective in improving patient care, both by reducing variation in care and re-designing patient pathways.
In particular, we are pleased to see improvements in the use of day case surgery, transformation of outpatient care and the introduction of surgical innovation, including transurethral ablation of bladder tumours (TULA).
We are grateful to all who have worked us, especially BAUS and BAUN, whose support and that of their members have been vital to the success of the programme."
John added:
"It has been a unique experience to work with colleagues from all urology units across England, Wales and Northern Ireland and we are extremely proud of the way urology teams have shared examples of best practice and adopted their models to improve patient care.
In our time as GIRFT leads, we have worked with other clinicians to produce an extensive portfolio of guidance for specific clinical conditions and to support improvements in service delivery. We are also proud that Urological Investigation Units (UIUs) have become the norm and that the majority of urological care is now delivered in the outpatient or day case setting.
We'd especially like to thank Edward Nickell in the GIRFT Academy, who has been pivotal in bringing our guides to publication and has been a central figure in our work over the last six years."
GIRFT is now in the process of appointing a new clinical lead or joint leads to continue the work of this core workstream.
