Job overview
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An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Head of Nursing and Quality within the Lewisham and Addictions Operational Directorate and the Croydon BDP Directorate. We welcome applications from highly motivated, dedicated and reflective nurses committed to placing nursing excellence at the heart of safe, effective and high‑quality care.
This role will provide expert operational nursing leadership, advice and management support, ensuring both registered and unregistered nursing staff deliver care to the highest professional standards. The post holder will play a key role in driving nursing quality, safety and workforce effectiveness across the directorates.
Applicants must have significant experience in a senior nursing leadership and management role within a mental health setting. You will bring a proven track record of leading change and service improvement through a quality improvement approach, supported by demonstrable achievements in improving clinical outcomes. A strong commitment to collaborative, multi‑professional working is essential, alongside excellent interpersonal and influencing skills to engage internal and external stakeholders. The successful candidate will have a thorough understanding of the national nursing agenda and the ability to translate this effectively across the Operational Directorate.
Kindly note: the successful applicant will be expected to start as soon as possible; therefore, please inform your line manager in advance when applying.
Main duties of the job
This is a strategic role within Lewisham and Addictions Operations Directorate, and Croydon BDP directing the development and performance of the nursing workforce to support successful delivery of care.
The provision of professional and visible nursing leadership, advice and support to nurses working in the directorate.
The direction of development of nursing policy and practice that reflects the needs of service users, implementing evidence-based practice, and contributing further to the knowledge base by evaluation of practice, and implementation of innovation.
Having an overview of quality across the services, reporting on learning from serious incidents and complaints, and leading in the improvement of patient experience. Ensuring the implementation of improvement science to improve practice and service delivery.
The provision of strategic professional advice to the Clinical Director and Service Director, and attending the service leadership meetings.
To be the Education and Training lead for the service. The direction of nursing workforce development and recruitment initiatives, and contribution to Trust wide initiatives that improve the quality of the nursing workforce.
Contribution to the development of the Trust-wide Nursing strategy, and local implementation, based on local service priorities, evaluating and feeding back to the Trust-wide Nursing strategy group.
Supporting the development of care pathways under the leadership of a Clinical Director
Working for our organisation
We are committed to ensuring our staff get the most out of their benefits package and understand the importance of a healthy work life balance. There is an extensive range of excellent benefits for you and your family. We want you to feel like you are part of a close knit team at SLAM. It's important to us that you feel valued and appreciated and that is why we have a comprehensive benefits package on offer. •
• Generous pay, pensions and leave, we offer a comprehensive pay, pensions and leave package, which is dependent on the role and length of service.
• Work life balance, flexible working and a range of flexible options, such as: part-time working and job sharing.
• Career development, there are plenty of opportunities to progress your career and we support your development through a number of programmes such as mentoring, coaching, positive people management, collective leadership and other talent programmes. Car lease, our staff benefit from competitive deals to lease cars.
• Accommodation, our staff benefit from keyworker housing which is available on selected sites.
• NHS discounts, with discounts up to 10% from a variety of well-known retail brands through the Health Service Discounts website.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Strategic Professional Leadership and Practice Standards
Delivery of world class patient care, providing leadership, focus, direction and empowerment to nurses ensuring that they are able to work to their highest potential, and that nursing within the service has a national and international profile. Delivery of clinical care at an expert level, role- modelling skilled delivery of nursing interventions, and maintaining skills at the cutting edge of clinical practice. Direction of the development of nursing interventions within care pathways, ensuring that the impact of this contribution is measurable, and that interventions remain consistent with the best available evidence. Compliance with national and local standards across the patient pathway. Responsible for making recommendations where no precedent is set, and for articulating the standards required. Record, promote and celebrate success within the nursing workforce. Contribute to the Trust wide management of under-performance when required, particularly ensuring that nurses are aware of the need to comply with local standards and the NMC Code of Conduct. Contribute and influence the national policy agenda in relation to the patient care group, including membership of national groups, and attendance and presentation at national conferences.
• Service Transformation
Delivery of the objectives of the Nursing Strategy and to evaluate and report progress on a monthly basis. This includes providing strategic leadership at a local level. Direction of the implementation of Quality Improvement initiatives within the service, supported by Nursing Directorate and QI staff, delivering AIMS accredited in-patient facilities, and rolling out Productive work across in-patient and community settings, demonstrating improvements in practice. Direction of the work of the Matron and the Clinical Nurse Specialists, to embed innovations within clinical practice, and to build systems that demonstrably sustain excellence.
• Quality and Assurance
Implement an integrated approach to risk management. To monitor comments, suggestions, complaints and compliments made by service users and others, identifying trends where appropriate and report findings. Ensure the development, implementation, monitoring and review of procedures, guidelines and training in relation to complaints, concerns, comments and compliments to ensure patients, services users and carers get the best possible outcome and where change and improvement is needed, there is evidence of it happening ensuring that lessons learnt from complaints and incidents inform changes in clinical practice and service delivery. Implement robust systems of patient experience feedback, evaluating the impact of these on improvements in clinical delivery, and amending care pathways to improve the patient experience as required. Assure clinical team performance against standards, supporting teams to improve where necessary, and developing systems of peer review and support. Establish local standards promoting best practice, utilising leadership and change management skills, and working with Clinical Service Leaders to continually improve clinical care delivery. Direction of compliance of all services with Privacy and Dignity standards. To provide demonstrable assurance that information available to clinical leaders supports the delivery of quality care by being relevant, informative and timely. Develop and implement appropriate performance indicators which evaluate accurately patient outcomes and service development needs. To provide demonstrable assurance that clinical teams are prepared for external inspections and prepare gap analysis in response to national enquires to ensure the implementation and monitoring of the resulting action plans for continuous quality improvement. To work closely with the Clinical Director and all Team Managers on all matters pertaining to governance, quality and audit and to lead on developing and implementing changes where necessary. To work with the services pharmacy department to review, monitor and collate departmental reports on all incidents, both clinical and non-clinical including drug errors. Through liaison and working with the service Clinical Director & Service Director, all managers and frontline staff ensure clinical governance and quality improvement concepts become embedded in Trust decision making, planning and performance management process. Oversee process for investigation of serious incidents. Ensure the development, implementation, monitoring and review of serious incident management, being open and investigation policies, procedures, guidelines and training for the service to ensure the organisation effectively learns from these events and takes proactive steps to reduce the chance of reoccurrence. To lead on Governance issues and Trust wide audits requiring action by either the service or at the request of the Service Director.
• Professional Advice and Executive Responsibilities
Provision of a strong nursing representation within the service executive, contributing to the highest standards of probity, integrity and governance and leading to effective internal governance arrangements that conform with best practice and statutory requirements. Provision of the nursing contribution to the executive team's development of proposals on issues of strategy, vision, performance, resources and standards of conduct. Contribution to the performance of the executive team in meeting agreed goals and objectives, ensuring that financial and quality information is accurate and that financial controls and risk management systems are robust and defensible. Representation of the service and at local, regional and national events, promoting achievements and ensuring that developments arising out of these are integrated into the service strategy. Delivery of a framework to interpret clinical policy change as it relates to care group and provide expert recommendations to operational colleagues, the Trust, local and national policy working parties. Provision of deputy cover for the Service Director as required.
• Workforce Development
Establish with the senior leadership team across the service a system of workforce planning for nursing based on the identification of the nursing contribution within clinical care pathways. This includes identification of skills gaps, creation of new posts and extension of roles. Support workforce development that is sensitive to the cultural needs of the workforce whilst setting universal standards and expectations for conduct at work. Work with the leadership team and undertake role of E&T Lead to ensure service requirements are reflected in the commissioning of education, training and development programmes to meet the workforce need identified, promoting multi-professional education where possible. New programmes of education and training are developed to facilitate changes in practice within the services. CNS and specialist nurse involvement in the development and delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate training programmes locally and nationally in order to facilitate the advancement of structured, evidence-based career progression. Ensure that high quality recruitment is achieved via the Trust recruitment and selection processes. There is a fair and transparent system for succession planning within the service, which recognises rising talent. This will include contribution to Trust wide selection activity. Nurses within the service meet the required standards for practice, e.g. completion rates of mentorship, preceptorship, and core competencies. Engage with appropriate agencies as a nursing leader in the development of innovative nursing practice and initiatives. Ensure that workforce performance is developed via the embedding of high quality supervision and appraisals for all disciplines, whether nursing or other.
• Strategic Direction
A framework is in place to support the dissemination of innovations in practice, education and research both nationally and internationally. That includes an annual increase in the number of nursing publications and conference presentations. Develop and implement a nursing service evaluation, quality improvement and research programme in close collaboration colleagues. Contribute to the Trust's Nursing Research and Development strategy and lead in the development and preparation of research proposals relevant to the service to attract both internal and external grants, collaborating with management and external agencies to identify clinically focused research priorities. Develop benchmarking initiatives relating to the service and contribute to the Trusts Clinical Governance Agenda.
• Regulation
In conjunction with the Service Director and Clinical Director, prepare for statutory inspection visits through the provision and update of key documentation and the regular assessment of performance in relation to statutory requirements. Lead and develop processes and systems to ensure compliance with regulatory and NHS requirements and best practice including, but not limited to, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and NHSI. Ensure appropriate CQC compliance monitoring programmes and processes in place across the clinical Teams to be able to evidence registration and ensure awareness of and readiness for external inspection and registration validation. Provide expert advice, information and support to senior managers, clinicians and committees on matters relating to quality and compliance Assist in internal and external benchmarking against best practice, and to challenge poor performance in service delivery.
Person specification
Intellectual
Essential criteria
1. Current live NMC registration. Experience of working in a clinical or management position in mental health provider organisations
2. Is prepared to challenge restrictive practices and thinking.
3. Cultural flexibility: ability to develop an in-depth understanding of a wide range of organisational and community cultures, developing plans and strategies with all stakeholders
4. Masters Degree in Leadership/ Healthcare or relevant clinical experience
Service User and Carer Focus
Essential criteria
5. •Seeks to ensure the provision of a high quality service to service users, families and carers
Other
Essential criteria
6. •Ability to employ a wide range of methods to gain support and ownership of ideas and values
7. •Ability to work creatively as a leader or a member of a team with internal and external colleagues and stakeholders
8. •Establishes and communicates courses of action and targets to ensure achievement of objectives
Motivation
Essential criteria
9. •Has high capacity for concentration and activity, and is outcome-orientated
10. •Develops others to grow their capacity and potential
Results Orientated
Essential criteria
11. •Focused on improvement: acts to improve performance and establish high standards of quality.
12. •Experience of setting objective measurements and developing and monitoring systems for performance management and improvement
Effective Communication
Essential criteria
13. •Ability to strive for excellence, to focus on what is important, and communicate achievements to all stakeholders.
Leadership
Essential criteria
14. •Ability to set out a clear direction, inspire others and provide direction when necessary
15. •Successful at building (selecting, training and developing
16. •effective teams as well as leading them
17. •Ability to make and implement autonomous decisions at directorate-wide level