Practices Made Perfect

Led by Dr. Patricia Oakley, Practices Made Perfect brings over 40 years of strategic workforce planning and change management expertise to NHS leaders across England and Wales. We help Boards, Clinical Leadership Teams, and National Programme Managers develop clear, actionable strategies for our rapidly changing healthcare landscape — including the challenges of systems leadership, scientific transformation, and workforce redesign.

We work collaboratively to understand your goals, and provide tailored work programmes, briefing papers, and presentations to support decision-making at the highest level.

About Dr Patricia Oakley

Dr Oakley is a recently retired Strategic Service and Workforce Policy Analyst, and Workforce Research Fellow at King’s College, London University. 

She has over 40 years’ health and public service experience in both operational management and policy research and development and has worked extensively with national policymakers and Trust boards, executive directors and senior clinicians, and with service managers and clinical practitioners in developing their strategies to deliver affordable public services. 

She has worked in management and organisational development; restructuring organisations and clinical care systems; designing and delivering skill-mix reviews and reprofiling programmes; conducting value for money audits and managing subsequent change programmes; and preparing strategic workforce and education and training investment plans.


A Founding Director of Practices Made Perfect Limited, Dr Oakley continues to work as an adviser in workforce planning and policy development.

Client Testimonials

“In the 1980’s we had personnel. Then along came Pat Oakley to North West Thames Regional Health Authority… and taught us all about workforce. At that time many units did not even know how many staff they employed. Pat brought us new ways of thinking, skill mix, unit labour costs, and of course workforce planning.”
Deborah O’Dea
Past HPMA President
“I have been present on many occasions over the years where Pat has captivated Board level, clinical leaders and HR practitioner audiences with her out of the box thinking around people matters.”
David Holmes
Director of HR, Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust HPMA President
“Hearing Pat speak sets everyone’s sights that bit higher and their horizons further. Her influence is game-changing in terms of how we perceive the ambition, scale and sustainability of our practice as professionals in healthcare people management.”
Natalie Dowey
Associate Director of OD & Engagement, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust