Deputy Midwifery Sister – Close Observation Bay

Job overview

Step into a pivotal leadership role within our Obstetric High Dependency Unit, where you’ll combine hands-on clinical expertise with real influence over how care is delivered. As Deputy Midwifery Sister, you’ll support the day-to-day running of a dynamic, high-acuity environment, guiding staff, strengthening teamwork, and ensuring women with complex needs receive safe, personalised care.

This is an excellent genuine development opportunity to grow your leadership, shape service improvement, and build confidence in managing people, performance, and governance. This role blends clinical and non-clinical responsibilities to develop strong communication, coordination, prioritisation, delegation, and problem-solving skills. You’ll need to be proactive, calm under pressure, and adaptable in a fast-paced environment.

Working closely with a highly skilled multidisciplinary team, you’ll contribute to workforce planning, quality improvement, and a positive team culture, while being a visible and trusted presence for staff and women.

We’re looking for a motivated, forward-thinking midwife who is ready to step up, challenge practice where needed, and lead with compassion and credibility. In return, you’ll join a supportive, ambitious team committed to excellence, innovation, and continuous learning - giving you the platform to progress your career while making a real difference every day

Main duties of the job

Provide visible clinical and operational leadership within the Obstetric HDU, supporting the coordination of safe, high-quality care for women with complex needs. You will act as a senior clinical resource, using advanced assessment, decision-making and escalation skills to manage risk and prioritise care effectively.

You will support the smooth running of the unit by overseeing patient flow, contributing to workforce planning and skill mix, and ensuring safe staffing through effective delegation and coordination. Working closely with the multidisciplinary team, you will promote clear communication, collaborative working and timely decision-making in a fast-paced environment. A key part of the role is developing and supporting staff -providing supervision, feedback and mentorship to build capability and maintain high standards of practice. You will contribute to governance processes by supporting audits, incident reviews and quality improvement initiatives, helping to embed a culture of safety, learning and accountability.

You will be expected to role model professionalism, remain calm under pressure, and demonstrate strong organisational, problem-solving and leadership skills to ensure consistently high standards of care and team performance.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For the full Person Specification and more information regarding the main responsibilities of this role, please refer to the attached Job Description.

Come and be a part of the best NHS trust in England to work for, according to our staff*

* UCLH top trust to work at in England - In the most recentNHS staff survey UCLH had the highest percentage of staff who said they would recommend us as a place to work, out of all general acute or acute/community NHS trusts in England – for the third year in a row.

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