Deputy Head of Nursing

Job description

Job responsibilities

The Deputy Head of Nursing is a core member of the Division and senior management team. They will work with the Head of Nursing to ensure all aspects of operational nursing is delivered to agreed high standards, providing the best possible experience and outcomes for service users.

The role of the Deputy Head of Nursing fundamentally centres on improving the patient experience. The role will oversee and champion evidence-based care and ensure that the fundamentals of care are actioned and evidenced to ensure high standards of care and support are in place across the different clinical pathways and services. Improving service user experience encompass how service users and their carers / families are involved in service development and delivery and how feedback is incorporated into practice and care decision-making.

The three main objectives of the role include:

Working collaboratively with the Head of Nursing in promoting visible, outstanding nurse leadership, and be able to cover the responsibilities of the Head of Nursing when required.

Providing leadership to clinical and direct care staff across the business unit, to promote, influence and ensure high standards of care are maintained through providing a visible, accessible and authoritative presence in wards for patients and their families.

Ensuring that practice governance and support services are coordinated across the division to improve patient experience

The underpinning principle is to have a professional leader who is accountable for co- coordinating safe, high-quality care to improve patients experience.

As an integral member of the of the Division management team the post-holder will support the development of governance structures that ensure learning from serious incident, other incidents and complaints are embedded in practice.

The post holder will work with minimal guidance, to support the strategic and business objectives for the Division and the Trust. They will be required to use their own professional judgement, gained from extensive experience, and professional, clinical and managerial knowledge to interpret and address a wide variety of operational nursing issues.

Accountable and responsible for providing the operational leadership of the registered and non-registered nursing work force of the Division to ensure delivery of a properly resourced, capable, competent nursing work force to support the highest standards of healthcare.

Working in partnership with the senior operational and clinical leaders in the Division to support them to:

o Identify improvement opportunities through analysis and understanding of data and information, curious reflection and critical thinking

o Deliver measurable improvement

o Track and report on improvement projects and evaluate outcomes

To take a lead role in ensuring that staff and others as appropriate are informed as to the purpose, principles and methods of undertaking and engaging in clinical governance activities.

Support service and team concordance with processes for the reporting of, and learning from, incidents, including the monitoring of incident reports. Proactively use this learning to identify quality improvement initiatives.

Research best practice and scout for innovative solutions to identified problems and opportunities

Sharing and spreading innovation and improvement ideas; engaging with individuals and teams to both share their improvement work and to help them to gain the benefits of the work of others through understanding the core improvement idea and how they can apply it to their context

In addition to the above, the holder of this post will act as deputy to the Head of Nursing. This will be giving support and covering the responsibilities of the Head of Nursing as required.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• First level Registered Nurse ( MH) in relevant field to the post.
• Management or leadership development
• Masters Degree or Equivalent Experience
• Teaching and assessing course

Desirable

• Evidence of education/training in specialist area (i.e., therapies, interventions, service-specialism)
• Postgraduate certificate in education or equivalent

Previous Experience

Essential

• Experience of working in a senior nursing post in complex mental health & learning disability settings
• Demonstrable knowledge of service issues & priorities facing mental health & learning disability services
• Experience of senior nursing leadership to achieve results across a broad range of outcomes, whilst providing senior nursing

Desirable

• Experience of writing for publication and/or presenting to professionals and the public
• Experience of leading research/quality improvement initiatives, developing and evaluating new ways of working

Skills

Essential

• Well-developed leadership and influencing skills with the ability to enthuse, motivate and involve individuals and teams, and have them understand the Trust's and your performance expectations
• Ability to be intellectually flexible and to look beyond existing structures, ways of working, boundaries and organisations to produce more effective and innovative service delivery and partnerships
• Experience of improving though audit, benchmarking and using evidence-based approaches

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Kingfisher Court

Harper Lane

Radlet

WD7 9HQ

Employer's website

https://www.hpft.nhs.uk/careers/ (Opens in a new tab)