Clinical Safety Officer

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job title

Clinical Safety Officer

Department/Section

Projects & Delivery

Salary Grade

£45-55,000

Main purposes of role

The Clinical Safety Officer role combines clinical expertise with an understanding of health information technology and clinical risk to provide assurance in compliance with digital clinical safety regulations.

The Clinical Safety Officer (CSO) will work under the supervision of the Senior Clinical Safety Officer to identify and mitigate potential hazards in new Health Call developed digital pathway designs that have been commissioned by NHS organisations, to reduce the clinical safety risk to a minimum.

In addition to this, the CSO will operate in the Health Call Clinical Safety Consultancy business, supporting both health care provider organisations, and healthcare software suppliers to meet their DCB0160 or DCB0129 obligations as appropriate.

The post holder will lead multiple clinical pathway developments in the safety aspects of development, producing relevant safety documentation including the clinical safety case report prior to live deployment of clinical pathways, after CSO approval.

The post holder will work closely with clinical teams from external NHS organisations, and with Clinical Safety Consultancy clients, to conduct safety hazard workshops, identifying and evaluating key safety hazards and effective mitigations and documenting them clearly and understandably in the Clinical Safety Case.

For internally developed pathways, the postholder will work closely with Health Call developers, project managers and delivery team, to ensure any design in the clinical functionality, supports the mitigation of any potential safety risks that are identified.

Key Responsibilities

1. Operate within the framework of the Health Call Clinical Risk Management System as documented in the Health Call Clinical Risk Management Policy and Procedure v1.0.

2. Work closely with the Senior CSO, delivery team and external commissioning NHS organisations and Clinical Safety Consultancy Clients, to develop the documentation supporting all pathway designs, ensuring the principles and standards of clinical safety are adhered to, ensuring all risks are mitigated to as low as possible in digital pathway developments.

3. Adhere to the principles of DCB 0129 and DCB0160, identifying key functional requirements impacting on the safety of digital pathway deployment, producing the end to end documentation and processes required in the development of Health IT products.

4. Organise and run hazard workshops, identifying potential risks with clinical commissioning leads or Clinical Safety Consultancy clients as the domain experts.

5. Complete the hazard workshop outputs in the form of hazard logs, identifying causes, controls in place, and mitigations to reduce clinical safety impact when deploying pathways into live environments.

6. Identify main hazards and key clinical factors that would introduce risk to patient safety on deployment. Work closely with the test team, to ensure test scripts and testing supports the end-to-end process and essential clinical safety touch points.

7. Produce clinical safety management plans, hazard log outputs and mitigations, and the production of clinical safety case reports, with CSO supervision and approval.

8. For internally developed pathways, adhere to DCB 0129, highlighting assumptions and expectations for the deploying organisation under DCB 0160. Work closely with Health Calls Senior CSO, to ensure all relevant documentation is appropriate and clinical risk has been mitigated to an acceptable level, for deployment.

9. Contribute to baseline metrics to both qualitatively and quantitatively measure improvement and evaluation of allocated pathway developments.

10. Responsible for liaison with the clinical stakeholder lead, of the commissioning organisation, working closely to ensure the specification and requirements are met within the safety standards.

11. Attend the Clinical Safety Board and deputise for the Senior Clinical Safety Officer if required.

Key results/objectives

1. Engage with pathway specific expert user groups pan region, to share best practice and ensuring expert evolution and quality improvement of product development.

2. Evaluate clinical service delivery, patient experience, clinical outcomes and staff benefits for allocated pathway developments, to support wider implementation and clinical digital transformation.

3. Maintain clinical expertise operating within practitioner boundaries of competence. Professional competency frameworks to be adhered to according to clinical background, ensuring professional CPD requirements are maintained.

4. Support contract sustainability through clinical engagement, increasing adoption locally and out of area.

5. Contribute to wider team and organisational objectives and pathway developments as agreed.

6. Develop and manage close relationships and co-ordination with other Health Call operating areas.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Clinician with current registration with an appropriate professional body. E.g., NMC, GPhC, GMC, HCPC etc.
• Experience of working within a clinical informatics capacity or team, where development or deployment of digital pathways has been implemented.
• Excellent clinical analytical skills, where complex information requires interpretation, impact predicted, and mitigations considered and applied.
• Understanding of clinical safety principles.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Excellent organisational and stakeholder management skills.
• Excellent team player.
• Ability to challenge where clinical risk will compromise patient safety.
• Competent with Microsoft Office product suite.

Desirable

• Minimum five years clinical experience in a clinical setting.
• Driving licence.
• Self-starter and excellent time management.

Qualifications

Essential

• Educated to degree level or equivalent.
• Completion of NHS England delivered Digital Clinical Safety Practitioner Programme -or equivalent accredited provider - or be willing to complete accreditation.

Desirable

• Evidence of continuing professional development.

Skills and Aptitude

Essential

• Experience of working within a Health IT software environment

Desirable

• Experience working within a clinical safety role, either supplier or NHS organisation

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.

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

Health Call Solutions Limited

Address

20A, First floor, Enterprise House

Kingsway North, Team Valley

Gateshead

NE11 0SR

Employer's website

https://www.nhshealthcall.co.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)