Deputy Chief Nurse

Location: Chertsey

Job Type:Temporary

Duration of booking: Expected to last up to end of July 2024 and maybe longer

Proposed start date: ASAP up to 2 weeks from now ideally

Sector: Healthcare

Base: Hospital

Band: 9

Pay Rates:

£53.00-£61.15 paye inclusive of holiday pay per hour

Depending on skill, experience and qualifications

This payment method is due to the client’s payment process

IR35: Inside

Working Days and Hours: 37.5 hours a week, Monday -Friday, 9:00-17:00 

Travelling for work purposes: Some travel across sites

Job Purpose 

The post-holder provides clinical leadership in the development of Nursing and Midwifery standards and practice that personifies excellence in the delivery of care, and in line with regulatory standards. The post-holder ensures that patients, their relatives and carers have a positive experience when accessing and receiving care/services from this Trust, and that this is at the forefront of all strategic development and improvement. The post holder fully aligns future spending and investment in line with strategic plans and converting strategic aims in to operational activities.

Duties

• Provide highly visible, and accessible senior leadership advice and support to all staff on issues relating to safe and compassionate nursing and midwifery care, acting as the Trust lead in the absence of the Chief Nurse;
• Work in collaboration with Associate Director of Quality to support quality and patient safety improvement activities to improve person-centred outcomes, reduce unwarranted variation, and eliminate avoidable harm;
• Work with the Chief Nurse in delivering the Nursing and Midwifery Strategy;
• Play an active role in assisting any talent management activities in terms of identifying emerging nursing and midwifery leaders from the workforce, creating a high support/challenge environment by supporting various career development/enhancement opportunities (e.g. by offering mentorship, shadowing opportunities etc);
• Support the Chief Nursing team with the production of authoritative, concise and professional reports or briefings on your areas of responsibility to assist the Trust Executive in appropriate decision making;
• Demonstrate personal commitment to ensuring that all statutory, regulatory and professional standards, practices and behaviours are adhered to.
• Personally engage in ‘back to the floor’ activities including undertaking a number of clinical activities in Trust services;
• Actively seek independent feedback from a range of services on clinical care standards relevant to your brief ensuring relevant quality and safety measures are gathered and accurately reported;
• For your areas of responsibility, hold leads to account for the delivery of safe and compassionate care;
• Produce performance reports and briefings for the Corporate nursing teams with regards services or portfolios under your responsibility;
• Provide appropriate support/challenge for Corporate business plans to ensure an appropriate balance between clinical care quality and financial efficiency;
• Lead on the Ward Accreditation programme for the Trust;
• Support the End of Life Care Strategy;
• Lead on Accessible Information Standard for the Trust
• Analyse highly complex information to formulate solutions and recommend the best course of action. This might involve comparing a range of options and making judgements on a variety of highly complex problems;
• Manage the teams within your area of responsibility using a range of best practice strategies to ensure they are focused on delivering individual and team objectives;
• Provide expert managerial supervision, coaching and support to ensure the team functions in a cohesive manner which demonstrates Trust values in action;
• Take effective, professional steps in partnership with Human Resources to deal promptly with any concerns regarding team or individual’s performance or practice;
• Use appropriate channels to escalate any areas of concern with regards standards of care, staff practices or behaviours that may put staff or patients at risk;
• Demonstrate appropriate understanding of Trust financial and contracting systems;
• Work proactively to constantly balance competing demands on resources to achieve sustainable, efficient and effective deployment of staff, time and money;
• Ensure robust escalation/ contingency plans are in place to respond to times of unexpected increased demand on services or unusual difficulties with staffing;
• Monitor all resource deployments to ensure resource usage is proceeding as planned, taking prompt and appropriate steps to deal with unplanned variances;
• Act to identify and reduce waste with the goal of freeing up people and money to deliver high quality, safe and compassionate care every time;
• Be the point of contact for NMC enquiries and referrals;
• Chair the Children’s and Young Adults Board
• Provide credible, effective and visible professional nursing and clinical leadership to the development, organisation and deployment of the N&M strategic recruitment and retention plans ensuring the Trust has staff with the right skills in the right place at the right time;
• In collaboration with HR, Divisional Chief Nurses, Chief Pharmacist and Head of Therapies provide oversight on the development of innovative and attractive methods of recruiting the Nursing & Midwifery and supporting Care Workforce to the Trust in order to achieve the Trusts recruitment targets. within the UK locally (establishing links with sources of potential recruits in schools, colleges, universities and raising the profile of the Trust as an employer of choice) and nationally as well as in the EU and outside Europe.
• With HR Learning and Development develop a pastoral and education support programme for nurses at all stages of their career. This is inclusive of a clinical skills programme (eg medicines management and cannulation), access to new roles, CPD Funding, training pathways, rotational programmes and mentorship (for newly qualified and new starters) to provide opportunities to attract and retain nursing staff, working across divisions internally and working with other organisations locally and regionally;
• With the Head of Professional Development and Divisional Chief Nurses work with HEIs, nursing colleagues, Director of Clinical education and Chief Nurse to develop a range of different approaches to new undergraduate nurse and midwifery education models;
• Work with Divisional Chief Nurses to ensure their clinical leaders have a robust and responsive approach to reducing their vacancy factor, increasing their stability metrics and improving their turnover data;
• Hold to account Divisional Chief Nurses and Matrons with regards to temporary staffing activity and ensuring the delivery of safe, compassionate patient care; and there is effective planning and rostering of the nursing and midwifery resource to maximise the use of resources and minimise dependence on short notice temporary fill;
• With HR anticipate the future supply and demand for nurses and midwives and the impact on patient care in order to identify potential options and risks to staff additional areas;
• Provide advice and prepare/present strategic reports and briefings for directors and stakeholder which provide status updates on issues, appraising outcomes and provide progress reports
• Responsible for ensuring that patient and staff safety targets within Trust objectives are met in accordance with any statutory or best practice standards;
• Work with the Chief Nurse on delivering the Trusts North Star Objective and promoting exemplar Infection Prevention Control Principles and Practice;
• Demonstrate expertise and competence in ‘safe staffing, safe care’ activities for all Trust nursing and midwifery services;
• Work with Nursing leads to ensure any specific Trust or National safety monitoring processes are effectively managed, coordinated and owned at local level;
• Lead on the Harms Free Care Strategy implementation for the Trust;
• Attend daily briefing sessions to provide senior leadership in support of Trust activities aimed at improving staff and patient safety in all sites and services (for e.g. site meetings, safe patient flow briefings, etc);
• Work with Divisional Chief Nurses, Matrons and Ward Mangers on providing a good and timely discharge process for patients;
• Work with external partners on an effective discharge process to enable a pull rather than push;
• Support the Chef Nurse on implementation of Shared Governance across wards and departments

Qualifications, Skills and Experience 

• Professional Registration with Nursing & Midwifery Council
• Relevant Health / Nursing Master’s Degree or equivalent relevant experience Management leadership qualification or equivalent relevant experience
• Maintained relevant CPD activity of 35 hours in the past 3 years
• Substantial demonstrable experience as a senior nurse in a large and complex organisation
• Demonstrable experience of improving patient experience and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and delivery excellence
• Demonstrate knowledge of Nursing and Midwifery workforce changes
• Developing and maintaining assurance systems to maintain professional standards
• Providing strong, visible and professional leadership across professional boundaries
• Demonstrable success in leading and delivering change and performance with and through diverse clinical teams