A leading doctor with Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, which covers Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull Hospitals, has been named as one of the country’s top clinical leaders for the second year running.

Professor Matthew Cooke (pictured), deputy medical director (strategy and transformation) at the Trust, was named in the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Top 100 Clinical Leaders at a ceremony in London.

The list recognises those individuals that are having the greatest impact in terms of driving and influencing high quality, safe care for patients and is decided by a panel of esteemed judges from across healthcare in the UK.

The HSJ said Prof Cooke’s inclusion in the list reflected his ‘impressive influence on the development of emergency care, whether within his own region or at the national level’.

Prof Cooke, who is also a professor of clinical systems design at the University of Warwick, said: “It is a great honour to be included in the HSJ Top 100 Clinical Leaders list again alongside so many respected health professionals doing exceptional work in their particular fields.

“I would like to thank my colleagues at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust for their support as I continue to push for development and improvement in emergency care in my hospitals and across the country.”

There was more cause for celebration for the Trust with a further inclusion in the Top 100 list, Professor Laura Serrant, a non-executive director at the Trust, as well as a professor of community and public health nursing at the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Wolverhampton.

It is yet another accolade for Prof. Serrant, who was named as the Queen’s Nurse earlier this year, as well as one of the HSJ’s Inspirational Women 2014.