Patient Safety Investigator

Job overview

Please note, at this stage, the role is open only to internal staff (including NHSP and Agency staff currently on placement within our organisation) and staff substantively employed within Kent and Medway NHS Trusts and the Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB). Any individual who is at risk of redundancy will be given priority, provided they meet the essential criteria.

The Patient Safety team sits within the Corporate Directorate of Nursing and Quality. The team is required to set the strategic direction for patient safety, to deliver on reactive and proactive aspects of patient safety improvement work and to deliver education and training to enable and support front line staff to keep patients and staff safer.

The job purpose for the Patient Safety Improvement Facilitator is to support in the delivery and embedding of a culture of continuous learning and quality improvement within the Trust. They will lead on the day-to-day delivery and development of the key workstreams to ensure service improvements and the key objectives of the patient safety strategy.

The post holder will utilise systems thinking, human factors understanding and just culture principles to address safety incidents to maximise the learning and supporting services to embed the identified safety improvements.

The post holder must hold a full, valid, UK driving licence and have access to a car/vehicle to use for business purposes (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010).

Main duties of the job

• Lead and manage multiple transient investigations and reviews and provide high quality, comprehensive, concise, and unbiased reports within the allocated timescales as per NHS Frameworks and regulations using a system-based approach.
• To act with integrity and be professionally responsible and accountable for own caseload and develop investigation plans and use peer review, subject matter experts and multidisciplinary teams to support quality and consistency.
• Engage and collaborate with internal staff involved and with external staff from other agencies, using a wide range of investigative methodologies and approaches.
• Communicate highly complex, sensitive and distressing information effectively to a range of stakeholders including patients, families, carers and staff whilst ensuring compassion, empathy and support are demonstrated throughout.
• Support organisational resilience to react promptly to adverse events (safety-I approach) and promote learning continuously and meaningfully from everyday work (safety-II approach).

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Use relevant resources to analyse complex findings e.g. policy, protocol,  training records, data reports, etc.
• Ensure the findings and recommendations of the report are discussed and agreed with the responsible senior leadership teams prior to submitting the report for approval.
• Support external investigations as appropriate.

Please refer to the attached job description for the full details on the responsibilities and person specification

We are serious about diversity and inclusion, and we are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, and we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles, like this one.