South of Tyne and Wear Clinical Pathology Services operates across laboratories in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead; Sunderland Royal Hospital and South Tyneside District Hospital. The service provides high quality diagnostic services to improve the health care of the people of South of Tyne and Wear. In addition it also provides bowel and cervical screening services for populations across the North East and Yorkshire.
The post holder will be responsible for the operational management of the sample reception processes to support the Biochemistry; Haematology Blood Transfusion and Immunology; Microbiology and Cervical Screening Departments of pathology. The Pathology Reception processes will be managed to ensure timely handing and processing of samples to support patient pathways across both primary and secondary care.
Main duties of the job
* Leading the pathology reception team across all sites
* Managing day‑to‑day reception and specimen handling
* Ensuring services meet KPIs, and is compliant with accreditation and regulatory standards
* Supporting budget control and service improvement
* Producing operational and performance reports
* Maintaining patient safety, quality, and governance
* Managing staff training, development, and supervision
* Handling complaints, enquiries, and escalated issues
* Overseeing IT systems and accurate record‑keeping
Person Specification
Qualifications
* Leadership Qualification or equivalent vocational experience
Experience
* Extensive operational management experience in a healthcare setting
* Experience managing staff and service delivery, including in complex or multi‑site teams
* Experience leading change and service improvement
* Ability to implement governance structures, reporting frameworks, and KPI‑focused performance management
* Strong communication, presentation, negotiation, and stakeholder‑management skills
* Good IT skills, including reporting, presentations, data handling, and Trust information systems
* Experience managing to meet accreditation and regulatory requirements
* Experience of workforce planning, succession planning, and staff development
* Experience of audit, quality improvement, and using data to inform service redesign
Skills
* Leading and motivating teams
* Supporting teams through change
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.
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