Employer Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site Across hospital sites (Luton & Bedford) Town Bedford Salary £55,690 - £62,682 per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 19/09/2025 23:59
Patient Experience Manager
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Job overview
The Patient Experience Manager will provide expert professional leadership, supporting the Lead for Patient Experience & Engagement in the implementation and evaluation of the Trust’s Patient Experience Strategy.
They will provide overall day-to-day management of highly visible and readily accessible to the Complaints and PALS teams, ensuring that all statutory responsibilities are met and that there is a comprehensive framework in place for effective complaints, concerns and compliment management.
The post holder will support the Trust in identifying learning from PALS and complaints feedback in order to continually improve the quality of its services and triangulate and respond to the themes and learning from complaints, PALS, patient safety and risk.
We are looking for an exceptional leader who is experienced, innovative and committed to making a real difference to patient experience and engagement. This is a key post, supporting the Patient Experience & Engagement Lead, Heads of Nursing, Midwifery & Allied Health Professionals and Clinical Service LineTeams. This post sits within the Bedfordshire Hospitals Corporate Nursing Team.
Main duties of the job
Report to Lead for Patient Experience and Engagement updating on patient and carer experience objectives quarterly; updating on current performance for annual reports to Trust Board and other reports as required.
Support the development and management of a Patient Experience Council (PEC); attend other committees/groups as required.
Deliver patient and carer stories for sharing at Trust Board and other relevant forums to enable the organisation to understand patients experience.
To develop initiatives that address the needs of those who are seldom heard, working closely with key colleagues and stakeholders.
Actively develop patient experience networks to improve patient experience throughout the patient/family/carer journey, learning from best practice and proactively share Trust success locally, regionally and nationally
Produce a patient experience communication plan as part of the strategy encompassing all levels of the organisation and including patients and their families, to ensure timely patient experience feedback is received, acted upon and shared, and performance against relevant external; bodies key performance indicators (e.g. CQC), are visible.
Working for our organisation
Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides hospital services to a growing population of around 700,000 people living across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas across two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Both hospital sites offer key services such as A&E, Obstetrics-led Maternity and Paediatrics. You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology.
Our Values
We not only recruit based on qualifications and experience - we recruit individuals who demonstrate the behaviours which underpin our Trusts core values. We achieve this by using values based recruitment. We are dedicated to making our recruitment practices as inclusive as possible for everyone, we are committed to promoting equality and diversity, and creating a culture that values differences.
Please note that vacancies may close prior to the advertised closing date when sufficient number of applications have been received. All new staff will be subject to a probationary period covering first 6 months in post. Travel between hospital sites may be required. Please review all documents attached to ensure you familiarize yourself with all requirements of the job.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The Job Description and Person Specification are attached to this job, please review for the full details and responsibilities
* Line management responsibility for the Complaints, PALS and Patient Experience teams to ensure that the team are able to work to their maximum potential and feel valued.
* To ensure the Trust has an accessible and visible process for Complaints/PALS/ Patient Experience which is efficient and effective in providing advice, support, information and signposting services to patients, service users, carers, members of the public and Trust staff.
* Ensure that all complainants receive a comprehensive, high quality and timely response that delivers the best outcome for the complainant and for the service involved based on the principles of listening, responding and learning.
* Lead the development of the Trust’s approach to patient, carer and public surveys and feedback including Friends and Family Test, the National Patient Survey programme, near/real time feedback etc.
* Provide education and training for all staff on corporate induction and across all disciplines regarding patient experience, being open and involving/engaging patients (including Accessible Information Standard).
* To develop training programmes and interventions aimed at improving patient experience, keeping the offering under review, to ensure synergies with other trust training and service improvement programmes are maximised.
* Ensure the views of patients and carers are taken into account in decisions about service provision, service change, processes and policies.
* Working in partnership with the communications team, ensure that the Trust website provides appropriate patient information in an accessible format.
* To work in collaboration with quality governance team to develop and improve InPhase (incident reporting platform), used to collect and report PALS and Complaints interactions in order to make the system more responsive and user friendly for all users (reporting, investigating, analysing and review of themes and trends).
Person specification
Qualifications
* Extensive experience both managerially and operationally in a related patient experience/healthcare field
* Master’s Degree or equivalent in a health related subject or working towards
* Registered Health Care Professional/ Registered Nurse
* Management or leadership course (or working towards)
Experience
* Experience of inter-agency working
* Ability to impart complex information to patients, relatives and carers with different levels of understanding
* Experience of successfully leading a team to plan and organising complex programmes of work, collectively managing multiple tasks and conflicting priorities and work under pressure to tight deadlines
* Highly developed understanding of NHS complaints legislation, regulatory expectations, best practice publications and how they can be effectively complied with / implemented
Knowledge
* Excellent verbal and written communication skills including presentations and publications
* Have proven experience of service development and change management in a complex environment
* Ability to work independently and as part of a team, as well as across departmental, organisational and professional boundaries
* Experience of running audit programmes
* Experience of leading a service through periods of change
Personal Skills
* Able to communicate with people from a wide range of professional backgrounds
* Able to make a connection between their work and the benefit to patients and the public
It is an exciting time to join the newly formed Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. We run two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Our 7,500 staff provide high quality care for a growing population of around 700,000 across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas.
You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career. Travel between hospital sites may be required. We have state-of-the art facilities placing us at the heart of cutting edge health care. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology available.
All new staff will be subject to a probationary period covering their first six months in post.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Name Ann Williams Job title Deputy Director of Nursing Email address ann.williams@bedsft.nhs.uk Telephone number 0797124828 Additional information
Belinda Wood - Director/Deputy Chief Nurse
Belinda Wood@bedsft.nhs.uk
Phone: 07825011220
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