Chief Nursing Officer

We are seeking an experienced Chief Nursing Officer to lead our nursing and allied health professional workforce. This is a critical leadership role, responsible for ensuring the highest standards of patient care across all services, including our wards, emergency departments, paediatrics, and maternity units., The Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) is a voting member of the Trust Board, sharing corporate responsibility for strategic planning, corporate policy making and the delivery of corporate objectives and operational performance of the Trust.

The CNO will provide professional and clinical leadership to all nursing and midwifery, allied health professionals, and health care scientific staff within the Trust. Fostering a culture which values continuing professional development and strives for excellence in all aspects of the delivery of patient care.

The post holder will act as the Place lead for Barking and Dagenham driving forward strategic initiatives, fostering partnerships, and ensuring that the health and well-being priorities of Barking and Dagenham residents are reflected in the Trust's services.

The post holder will be expected to fulfil statutory responsibilities as a Trust Board member and ensure that the Trust adheres to appropriate policy and practice where required in the management of nursing, midwifery and allied healthcare professionals.

The post holder will provide clear leadership to improve patient experience, clinical outcome, quality of care and safety of patients. This will include developing a culture of high-quality patient care, listening to understand and changing as a result informed by best practice in the health and commercial sectors.

Building on the legacy of our previous Chief Nurse, Kathryn Halford, who led with deep knowledge and expertise over her nine-year tenure, the next CNO will be expected to continue her strong focus on quality and safety while bringing fresh ideas and leadership to the role. The ideal candidate will have significant experience as a Chief Nurse or Deputy Chief Nurse at a large acute Trust, with Board-level experience.

We're an organisation that is getting better and better. We were the most improved Trust in England for A&E performance in 2023/24; we're no longer in special measures; and Matthew Trainer, our Chief Executive, has been named the top CEO by the Health Service Journal. Our improvements are driven by a determination to deliver care we're proud of and that our patients are happy with.

Many of our 8,000 staff - who come from 146 different countries - live in the three diverse London boroughs we serve and the majority are from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. More than 400 of them are on apprenticeship programmes and we're proud to be a London Living Wage employer.

We operate from two main sites - King George Hospital (KGH) in Goodmayes and Queen's Hospital in Romford. We have two of the busiest emergency departments in London - more than 300,000 people visited our A&Es in 2023.

Patients across north east London are benefitting from two new state of the art theatres at KGH and our Community Diagnostic Centres at Barking Community Hospital and St George's Health and Wellbeing Hub will significantly increase the number of scans that can be carried out.

We're looking forward to introducing an electronic patient record next year. This will mean the records of any patient visiting one of the seven hospitals run by BHRUT and Barts Health will be accessible to the clinical teams. It'll make things easier for staff and will be better for patients.