Job overview
About the Role
Reporting to the Associate Chief Nurse, you will provide strategic leadership and expert guidance in developing, implementing, and overseeing patient safety and clinical governance across our Trust. You'll ensure robust systems are in place to foster a culture of safety, continuous learning, and improvement while maintaining compliance with national frameworks including PSIRF, Duty of Candour, and NHS Resolution standards.
This is more than a governance role – it's an opportunity to transform how we learn from incidents, support our teams, and ultimately improve patient outcomes across Buckinghamshire.
Main duties of the job
What You'll Be Doing
•Lead the Trust's Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) implementation and incident reporting processes
•Provide strategic oversight of claims and inquest management, working with the Litigation Manager
•Drive organisational learning from incidents, serious events, litigation, and inquests through thematic analysis
•Champion a Just Culture and Appreciative Inquiry approach across all departments
•Ensure timely dissemination and compliance with National Patient Safety Alerts and CAS notifications
•Lead and manage the Patient Safety and Clinical Governance Team to deliver responsive, high-quality services
•Design and deliver comprehensive training on patient safety, incident investigation, and quality improvement
•Present reports to the Patient Safety Board, Executive Management Committee, and contribute to Quality Accounts
•Support Care Groups and Clinical Directorate Units in developing safe systems and processes
•Represent the Trust in regional and national patient safety forums and networks
Working for our organisation
Why colleagues think we are
What does Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust offer you?
As part of our BHT family, you’ll benefit from learning and development opportunities to support your career progression.
Alongside NHS benefits of generous annual leave entitlement and pension scheme, you'll have access to NHS discount schemes.
We provide a range of health and wellbeing services to promote a healthy, happy workforce.
What do we stand for?
Our vision is to provide outstanding care, support healthy communities and be a great place to work.
Our mission is to provide personal and compassionate care every time.
We are working hard to increase diversity at all levels within the trust. We believe a diverse workforce can have a positive effect on both staff wellbeing and patient outcomes.
We welcome applications from black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates, LGBTQ+ candidates, candidates with disabilities and care-experienced candidates.
We make employment decisions by matching our service needs with the skills and experience of candidates, regardless of age, disability, gender, gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation.
Person specification
EDUCATION, QUALIFICATIONS & TRAINING
Essential criteria
1. Clinical qualification and registered with a clinical regulator, e.g. HCPC, NMC, GMC
2. Completed Master's level education, preferably in Leadership and management and/or Patient Safety
3. Degree related to healthcare management
4. Evidence of further continued professional development.
Desirable criteria
5. Diploma in Clinical Risk Management or related demonstrable experience
EXPERIENCE eg Breadth of occupational experience
Essential criteria
6. Extensive experience in Patient Safety management, clinical governance, and quality improvement.
7. Experience in the NHS at a senior management level, minimum 3 years
8. Evidence of ability to use knowledge and experience to analyse complex patient safety issues
9. In-depth knowledge of acute and community-based healthcare and the application of the Department of Health and NHS England/ Improvement strategies, including the Patient Safety Strategy.
10. Experience of teaching senior staff groups and of developing training programmes
11. Experience in effective budget management
12. Evidence of experience with change management in a team
Desirable criteria
13. Experience in managing projects
SKILLS, ABILITIES & KNOWLEDGE
Essential criteria
14. Ability to communicate clearly in spoken and written English, with patients, relatives, clinicians, managers, Directors and external agencies and others
15. Effective skills in persuasion, negotiation, tact and diplomacy, and the ability to challenge in a constructive, non-confrontational way
16. Ability to produce clearly written analytical reports and/or business cases for a corporate audience
17. Excellent computer literacy skills with knowledge of developing and leading presentations, using and managing databases and effective use of word processing software, and incident reporting systems such as Datix
18. Excellent time management skills including ability to manage own time, the team’s time, reprioritising to meet deadlines
19. Ability to work within a team and independently
20. Ability to use own initiative and judgement to make decisions
21. Ability to problem solve complex situations or information
22. Ability to produce and/or critically evaluate guidelines and protocols, strategies and research
23. Knowledge of health and safety and risk management
PPE requirements: Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust requires all colleagues to wear appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) in accordance with our infection prevention and control procedures.
COVID-19 and Flu vaccinations remain the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course our patients from the viruses when working in our healthcare settings. We encourage our staff to be vaccinated when recommended.
Application deadline: This post will close on the closing date stated at midnight, however if we receive a large number of applications or there is a change in circumstance, we may be required to close a job before the advertised date.
Application information: If you are offered a job, information will be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records (ESR) system.
Shortlisting: The monitoring and safeguarding sections are not made visible to the shortlisting panel. The safeguarding section may be made visible to the interview panel, dependent on the role being recruited into.
Travel expenses: It is Trust policy that travel expenses for interviews will not be reimbursed.
Smoking: All Trust sites are NO SMOKING. Smoking in all areas of the buildings and premises is prohibited.
Employer certification / accreditation badges