Partner · London · With the firm since 2018
Isobel Garside
Advises hospital groups, medical device makers and charities on readiness, recalls and inquiries. Formerly director of communications of a hospital trust.
Isobel Garside advises hospital groups, medical device makers, care providers and charities on crisis readiness, recalls, inquiries and the communications that follow a serious incident involving patients.
She was director of communications of a large hospital trust for seven years, through two inspections and an inquiry into maternity care, and before that worked in communications for a medical research charity. She joined Halden Rook in 2018 as a partner.
Her view, which she repeats to every client, is that in healthcare the people who matter most are the families, and that every statement should be written so that a family could read it at a kitchen table without feeling that they had been managed. She also advises a number of museums and heritage bodies, which she says are hospitals for objects and have many of the same problems.
She is a lay member of a research ethics committee.
Selected experience
- Advising a hospital group through an independent review of its surgical outcomes, 2020 to 2021.
- Advising the trustees of a national museum on the return of 187 objects to a claimant community, 2022, with Frances Idowu.
- Advising a medical device maker on a field safety notice in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 2024.
Clients are not named. Matters are listed with the client’s agreement.
Speaking
Recent
- The kitchen-table test. A talk to hospital communications teams, Manchester.