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[00:00:26] Simone Roche: Hello. Welcome to the sixth of our We Are Powering On season of the Northern Power Women podcast. I'm your host Simone Roche and every week I am joined by someone from our Northern Power Women community who we can all learn from and hear their stories.

[00:00:42] And this week I must admit, this is such an amazing, amazing background story. I love reading them every week and I'm lucky enough to be chatting to the amazing Dr. Penny Trayner award-winning pediatric clinical neuropsychologist and honorary lecturing, clinical health, and psychology at the University Of Manchester.

[00:01:00] In 2009, she founded a specialist community-based neuro-psychological rehabilitation service for children with acquired brain injury, serving patients and families across the UK. Penny is also the creator of Goal Manager and award-winning cloud-based software application designed to facilitate effective goal-setting in rehabilitation.

[00:01:20] Goal Manager has received a national award for innovation brain injury rehabilitation and is now being implemented in services across the UK and the USA. When she's not doing that, cause obviously there's loads of time after that. Penny is also a professional DJ and has used these skills to co-design a deejaying for rehabilitation program as a vehicle for helping children and adults recover from catastrophic brain injuries.

[00:01:44] Wow. Welcome Dr. Penny. 

[00:01:46] Dr Penny Trayner: Thank you, simone. That was a great rundown in my life. Thank you.

[00:01:49] Simone Roche: Congratulations for being part of our Future List 2022, we were having a good chat just before the recording. And sort of the conversations that you had in the room on that night, not whatever we were five or six weeks ago in Manchester at the awards.

[00:02:05] Dr Penny Trayner: Yeah. I mean, it was absolutely fantastic. And thank you for including me and me being part of that. You know, the moment that we've got that nomination, I kind of thought, well, what's this all about, like, I have to say I'm new to the Northern Power Women and you know, on the night, I just met some really incredible women who I've continued to interact with and network with outside of it, you know, building networks and things are growing it's, this is what we need.

[00:02:27] You know, I've been a, sort of a lone practitioner for the last, you know, 13 years of my career in private practice. And, you know, it can be quite challenging out there and being on your own and being out there in the world. And fortunately about a year ago, actually just coming up to 18 months ago, my new EA Paula Theobald, who's also an incredible woman came and joined me and has brought me into this world and started getting me networking and getting me connecting. And so this was part of that. So you have big thanks to her as well. 

[00:02:53] Simone Roche: And then that's what the awards war was about for me was to, to enable you to shine a light on other people, for people to shine a light on you, to have those stories told. And we'd just heard at the start of this podcast, you know, your achievements and everything that you've done and do is so diverse and so rich, and you are a renowned and celebrated neuro-psychologist. There were lost lots of rehabilitation psychologist, pediatric. It was, there was, it was hard to get my tongue run some of those in your introduction, but can you, can you explain more about the field?

[00:03:23] Dr Penny Trayner: Yeah, so, I mean I'm a Neuro-Psychologist, so Neuro-Psychologists are clinical psychologists or educational psychologists by background. So it's a very long training process. So we've all done an undergraduate degree in psychology and then doctoral training. And then the neuro-psychology bit is post-doctoral training and post-graduate training to specialize in working with individuals, who've gotten their logical conditions.

[00:03:45] So my particular field is acquired brain injury, but you might be working with people who have brain tumors, epilepsy, all kinds of different conditions. My other specialist field actually is working with people that have Tics and Tourette's syndrome. So I see lots of young people totally online now. Since the pandemics are now treating people who over the country without ever actually meeting them in person.

[00:04:05] And so it's like I say, a very long road to get there. And that means that there's not that many of us, there's only about, I think just around 40 Pediatric Neuropsychologists in the country and few more adult ones. So it means we're very busy, which kind of links into my world of kind of getting into, you know, tech and trying to think about ways that we could speed things up really and deliver the best for patients with the time we have available, which is quite stretched 

[00:04:29] Simone Roche: That really is the ultimate of using your power for good and innovating for good. Cause you, you work with children and adults who have experienced brain injuries, have numerous additional challenges to cope with. And the one technique that you use is your award-winning goal manager and the goal setting isn't it. Tell us about that. 

[00:04:46] Dr Penny Trayner: Yeah, there's a bit of a funny backstory to this actually. I come from a family of a long line of engineers, everyone, you know, my father, his father, my brothers are all working technology and engineering. So there's me say I'm going to be a psychologist. I'm going to work with people and forget tech.

[00:05:01] And like, here I am right back here, you know, where the family started. So, and it, and it came about because Goal Manager is a platform, I guess, if you think about it, like your monday.com, your Trello, your, your management, your workflow management, but for rehabilitation. So if you've had an injury. And there's a load of kind of different professionals involved or delivering different aspects of your health care or, you know, with the greater goal of getting you back to, you know, helping you recover.

[00:05:28] There's a lot of information to coordinate. It's really, really difficult to pull that information together to communicate across multiple services, to make sure that you're tracking progress, to make sure it's being represented accurately, to make sure you're providing proper justification for funding going forward.

[00:05:43] So all of that is really complicated. And it was a job that I was tasked with from the people that I work with, I tend to be the clinical lead of the team. So it's my job to pull all that together. And, you know, it just became an increasingly onerous job. You know, I didn't get into psychology to be doing admin.

[00:05:59] You know, it is a very important part of the job, but I really want to be out there seeing people. So. It just evolved organically from our experiences as service thinking, what can we do to speed things up? Where, where can we automate things? Goal setting is such a huge part of rehabilitation. You know, you need a direction, you need a focus and the patients need to know why you're doing the things they're doing.

[00:06:17] So we took that and just kind of develop something to use in-house within our service. And it just took on a life of its own really, when we realized actually how helpful this is not only in brain injury. Spinal injury, any sort of rehabilitation. If you've had some, any complexity in your life, that's involving multiple professionals, we can help and speed things up and free up your clip, your service, your, your service providers, so they can spend more time with you and less time on admin.

[00:06:41] So that really is now become the mission I'm like now let's look. And look at other areas, where else can we innovate? What else can we be doing? How can we be sort of using a bit of a bottom up process with the industry? Because I think traditionally with healthcare, we clinicians often feel that maybe there's a bit of a top-down model where technology companies come in and give us something and go here.

[00:07:01] We've invented this platform for you off you go. And we often find is not fit for purpose. So it's clunky or it's difficult to use or. It's just because then they're not designing from the ground up. So, you know, we're out there on the ground. Patients know what they need and they want. Clinicians know what they need to do to help their patients. So I'm really a champion now of kind of finding that innovation and kind of shining a light on it. So, you know, opportunities like this are absolutely invaluable to that. 

[00:07:26] Simone Roche: No, it's amazing. Cause that is, like you say, it's, it's, it's, it's been designed and co-designed for your patients in minds and not just being, having to go here you go. Here's something new. Crack on with it you know, so what transformation have you seen in your patients being, you know, by using the goal manager?

[00:07:44] Dr Penny Trayner: Everything because everything is more streamlined, more organized. It means that we're spending far less time on admin. We've been able to grow as a service. We'll be able to expand the number of people we see, and we see that replicated in other areas.

[00:07:55] Everyone can do that because they're not ,spending so much time with it. It's much easier and much clearer to get to people's difficulties when you've got a system that just helps you sort through the data and organize it. So we're getting critical quicker identification of problems. We're not missing things, not that we were, but there's, people's lives are complex and there's a lot to consider and we need to make sure we look holistically across the breadth of what everyone needs and when there's a lot of data to sort through that can be very difficult.

[00:08:20] That doesn't happen anymore. It's a pleasure to be able to log on and talk through someone's Goal Plan with them. They can see really clearly why they're doing what they're doing. And one thing actually hadn't occurred to me that an individual I spoke to a couple of weeks ago pointed out to me, and it's a shame that this is really the case, that they felt a real benefit from them as a, from a patient perspective was accountability for their services.

[00:08:40] So when your service provider says they're going do something, it's hard to keep track of that and hard to kind of hold them to account why it hasn't happened or, you know, when it was going to happen. So they were like, this is really good. So I can go in with my service provider. This is what we said, we're doing, this is what's happening. Why is it not happening or what the challenges? So it's clear for everyone.

[00:08:59] Simone Roche: It's a control on both sides, isn't it. And that's got to be good for mental health as well. And it's great to hear that passion, that passion you have about this innovation, about your people, about, you know, wellbeing about, you know, the clinical.

[00:09:12] And I know you're, you're also really passionate about Neurodiversity in the workplace. We did a webinar recently and we've got a power circle very soon. And I know, you know, there's a whole thing about workplaces being more engaged with neuro diverse community now is, do you think there's more understanding less judgment around this anymore?

[00:09:30] Dr Penny Trayner: Yeah, I'd love to say that we're, you know, there is more understanding and less judgment, but, you know, I think that's difficult to gauge, but I think what there definitely is, is increased recognition and discussions around this. And there's some really wonderful ambassadors for this that are alive on LinkedIn and are out there.

[00:09:46] I see them every week training. Workforces and going into companies to really talk to them. So I think there's a real recognition. I think there was a drive for employers to try and make this better and an understanding of the legal framework around this stuff. But actually I think one of the things, the pandemic, we all sat in our houses and had an opportunity to understand a little bit more read of it a bit more, watch a few more things. And so hopefully it has filtered through. I certainly feel like you see much more of that kind of discussion going on. I'm going to be interesting to talk to the neurodivergent people about how they fit. 

[00:10:16] Simone Roche: Absolutely. And I think it's about not just it's, you know, go, oh, here you go. We're going to talk about this.

[00:10:20] It's almost that action. What are we going to do and what we're going to change? And I think that's, that's the, you know, we can have lots and lots of conversation, but how are we in true Northern style, you know, cracking on with this, you know. So I think it's really important. 

[00:10:32] Dr Penny Trayner: And I think the pandemic, a lot of those individuals who perhaps struggle with open plan workspaces and lots of changing daily changes to schedules and things really, you know, we need to think about how we create this hybrid workspace where people can, people that need those sorts of adjustments in their working practices can access them.

[00:10:49] We shouldn't all be forced to go into the office. I don't think there's just kind of feels like there's this movement of let's all get back in, but I think it's about, we need to top stuff and take stock and work out what's best for whom.

[00:10:57] Simone Roche: Absolutely 100%. And talking about even more passions, you have a really cool passion, which is deejaying. Where did your love of music come from?

[00:11:05] Dr Penny Trayner: It's a very, very long standing love. Way back from, you know, my family with everyone, we're a very musical loving family, but actually the DJ thing was something I always wanted to do. I had to have a lot of friends who were DJs like big, you know, used to be a big clubber and like going to lots of events and stuff, always love going out if you like and music.

[00:11:23] But I just didn't have time. You know, I said at the start of this, that journey to become a Psychologist, not a huge amount of time on that journey to be doing a lot of other stuff. So I just parked it. But this is a really great Power Woman's, story. My, I became a DJ, three years ago. And when Lisa Lashes, who is, I think till this day, I think she's still the only female DJ to ever have been in like the top 10 DJs in the world, which is actually incredible.

[00:11:46] She's an incredibly inspiring woman and she set up this camp. It's like three months. Took me from zero to hero, DJ camp where we learn deejaying music, production, podcasting, radio production, all of that, three months, two days a week at tiger tiger in Manchester. So we replaced in a club, it was really industry based.

[00:12:04] Fantastic. So I merged, I started off not even knowing what the kit was called and, you know, emerged a professional DJ and, you know, thanks to Lisa for putting that together. And I know she's carrying on those programs. So she's another lady actually to get on your podcast and it might be nice to hear about that.

[00:12:18] Simone Roche: 100% Lisa, come on down. We'd love to get you in. Although when I, when I interview professionals like yourself, I always have my own imposter syndrome thinking. So, so amazing this, because you're a professional DJ and you've taken this in to your co-design and the DJ and rehabilitation program. What's the impact on the children and adults that you've worked with with this. Cause it's amazing. 

[00:12:38] Dr Penny Trayner: Yeah. So I partnered with DJ Mark One , he's been training people for over 30 years in industry. So he's really, really skilled at getting people deejaying. And the bit we put, we thought kind of put our heads together to think about what are the benefits from a neurological perspective in terms of attention, concentration, memory, well-being, self-esteem, planning and organizing skills, all of that stuff and, and having a purpose, having a focus. And so what we're finding is where some of the young people and young adults that we're working with who may have been de-motivated previously or less engaged with their rehabilitation. Cause it's, it does wane over time. You know, we all know that feeling of starting something can it's great.

[00:13:15] But after a time, you know, it can be hard to keep it up. So it's giving them a purpose. It's giving them. And we're seeing an increase in well-being, decrease in issues around attention and concentration problems. Use of more use of kind of all the strategies that we recommend, because it's, they've got reason to use these things.

[00:13:32] It's hard to say to a young person, you need to use a diary cause you know, Your memory difficulties. But actually if they've got to remember their gigs, they got, remember the DJ lessons suddenly they've got a reason to do that. And so it really increases that motivation and drive to keep going and keep going with their recovery.

[00:13:47] So, yeah, it's great. Really great.

[00:13:49] Simone Roche: I love it. I love the way you've been able to package and maneuver and arrange and organize all your side hustles, passions, you know purpose all into this beautiful, impactful package around rehabilitation and, you know, supporting and engaging and motivating and engaging with, with people with really severe injuries.

[00:14:12] So, penny, I think you are a total legend. I want a Northern Power Women DJ to hero bootcamp. We've got to do something out there, but I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come on the podcast today, you are totally inspiring and we definitely want to get you on one of our PowerUp mentoring, because the fact that you can bring all this joy and passion and expertise into one, one spaces is phenomenal.

[00:14:36] Dr Penny Trayner: Thank you Simone! That's what it's all about isn't it inspiring everyone to do better. And you know, we together we can lift each other up and yeah, it's incredible. So thank you for having me be a part of this. 

[00:14:47] Simone Roche: Thank you so much, Penny for being here today and thank you all for tuning in.

[00:14:51] If you love our episodes, let us know by rating, reviewing, subscribing to the podcast, to let your friends know, reach out to the socials at north power women on Twitter and Northern Power Women on all our other social media.

[00:15:02] Drop us a line at the podcast at Northernpowerwomen.com. Our next up networking session will take place on 16th of May from 12 to 1pm. Please sign up via the show notes. Wherever you are looking for advice or happy to give these sessions are hugely impactful during this next Monday, when I'll be joined by another fabulous, wonderful role model from the Northern Power Women community.

[00:15:21] I'm Simone Roche. You've been listening to the Northern Power Women podcast, a what goes on media production.