Associate Director of Nursing for Quality & Safety

Job overview

Are you an experienced senior nurse with the credibility, expertise and ambition to shape quality and patient safety across one of London’s large mental health trusts?

We are seeking an exceptional Associate Director of Nursing for Quality & Safety to join our senior Nursing Directorate leadership team at North London NHS Foundation Trust.

This is a pivotal Trust-wide leadership role, with responsibility for providing strategic nursing leadership and oversight across quality, patient safety, integrated governance and organisational learning.

The opportunity

Working alongside the Chief Nursing & AHP Officer, Deputy Chief Nursing Officer and senior clinical and operational leaders, you will have the opportunity to influence how we understand quality, respond to risk and translate learning into measurable improvements.

You will provide leadership across a significant portfolio including:

• the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF)
• Learning from Deaths and mortality governance
• integrated quality governance and assurance
• development and delivery of the Trust's annual Quality Priorities
• learning from incidents, complaints, mortality reviews and patient feedback
• patient and family involvement in learning responses
• improvement and learning across clinical services.

Main duties of the job

About you

We are looking for a Registered Nurse with current NMC registration who brings significant senior NHS leadership experience across quality, patient safety and governance.

You will be able to demonstrate:

• substantial senior leadership experience within a complex NHS environment
• experience of quality surveillance, performance reporting and identifying emerging risks
• the ability to interpret complex quality and safety information and translate it into clear priorities and action
• experience of influencing senior clinical, operational and corporate leaders
• strong leadership of multidisciplinary teams and the ability to develop high-performing services

A key part of the role will be bringing together information from across the organisation to identify emerging themes and risks, ensuring that quality intelligence leads to action and sustainable improvement. You will provide expert advice and assurance to senior leaders, Executive committees and the Board and will work closely with Clinical Care Groups and corporate teams across the organisation.

Just as importantly, you will bring compassionate, visible and values-led leadership. You will be comfortable working in a complex environment, able to navigate competing priorities and confident communicating highly sensitive information with clarity, judgement and diplomacy.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Why this role?

This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the next phase of our quality and safety journey.

You will have the scope to strengthen how we triangulate intelligence, learn from patient safety events, understand variation and risk, and ensure that the voices of patients, families and staff influence improvement. You will also play an important role in supporting an organisational culture characterised by openness, learning, continuous improvement and compassionate leadership.

The postholder will lead senior patient safety and governance functions, including the Head of Integrated Governance Systems, Head of Patient Safety Incident Management and Patient Safety & Family Liaison Manager, and will deputise for the Deputy Chief Nursing Officer when required.

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

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.