Head of Patient Safety and Governance

Are you a motivated and committed Senior Leader who is passionate about patient safety and clinical governance? If this appeals to you, then an exciting opportunity has arisen to join our successful team at Northumbria.
The role of Head of Patient Safety and Governance is crucial to enable Northumbria's continued success in the delivery of outstanding care. You will ensure that the Trust has a continuous 'forward look' both in implementing the Trusts patient safety and clinical governance strategies and in ensuring a focus across the Trust on continuous improvements in these areas.
Improving patient safety, quality and productivity is an explicit priority and needs to underpin all elements of initiatives undertaken. Innovation and ambition for improvement are key for Northumbria in order to continue to provide safe and high-quality care, deliver the Trust's strategic aims and objectives and promote a culture that is progressive, inclusive and values driven.
You will provide leadership and direction, providing expert guidance and support across our Business Units, collaborating with colleagues and stakeholders to identify risks and share learnings as we constantly strive to make the Trust the safest it can be. The role requires credibility and personal authority, to bring a depth and breadth of experience to address external environmental challenges and influence internal teams.
You will ensure close working relationships with both internal and external stakeholders., · The post holder will develop effective strategy and operational policies for promoting patient safety and innovation in Northumbria Healthcare.
· To role model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture within the trust. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coaching to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams / departments and across organisational boundaries., Working closely with colleagues across the sector, ensuring coherent strategy and will:
· Be accountable for legal responsibilities in delivering statutory patient safety duties for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in line with national requirements and regulatory bodies.
· Provide independent expertise and guidance for the purposes of maintaining patient safety, encompassing a whole healthcare system approach.
· Lead on a Trust wide approach to patient safety incidents, including the development and implementation of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF).
· Drive reform and support organisational change and uptake of initiatives that support excellence.
· Develop and communicate the vision for the role of innovation, and the development of patient safety strategy and operational policies to support this vision.
· Monitor compliance and evaluate impact by scrutinising process, whilst ensuring business units are responsive and accountable to patients, the public and wider stakeholders to continuously improve quality, safety and a culture of improvement.
· Work with the business units and the Board to ensure information and intelligence from incidents and emerging patient safety issues are used as the basis for wider patient safety best practice. Engage with key strategic regional and national policy makers to inform development of national strategy and policies.
· Provide expertise of best practice methodologies, regulatory requirements, policy imperatives, innovation and technological developments and stakeholders knowledge.
· Take responsibility for the overall leadership and management and associated staff within a given portfolio.
· Be responsible for the provision of synthesizing best evidence available, clinical advice operations and performance information, organisational and policy context and information on related activities from across the health and social care system into a coherent strategy.
· Demonstrate robust quality governance and clinical compliance, policies and programmes of work in line with the trust quality strategy.
Applicants who are members of the Armed Forces, and those who have a disability that requires support in the work place (two ticks pledge) and who meet the essential criteria will be interviewed under the Trust's interview guarantee scheme.
We recognise the positive value of diversity and inclusion and are committed to a workforce that is diverse, equal and inclusive. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME people are currently under-represented in our workforce as well as other under-represented groups such as LGBT+ and disabled candidates. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, we have a Gold award from the Defense Recognition Scheme, and we are delighted to support Apprenticeships, Age Posi+ive and are a mindful employer.
If you require any reasonable adjustments to attend interview please make the recruitment team aware as soon as possible by calling our HR Recruitment Team on option 2.
Applicants who meet the Fit and Proper Person Requirements (FPPR) will require additional pre-employment checks in line with CQC and NHS England statutory guidance.
Make sure to read the 'applicant guidance notes' before submitting your application and make sure you know everything there is to know before joining our fantastic trust!
Please note that it is a requirement of this Trust that all successful applicants pay for their own DBS certification if a DBS check is required for the post. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first monthly pay.

Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work for an organisation that was voted the best acute and combined acute and community trust in the country, based on the experience of its staff (NHS Staff Survey 2022). Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn't, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare and, this is…the Northumbria Way!
What the Northumbria Way means for you:
+ Extensive staff health and well-being programme including access to our specialist Wellbeing Hub
+ Support and connection through a variety of Staff Network groups
+ A range of flexible working opportunities
+ Generous annual leave and pension scheme
+ Access to lease car and home electronics scheme (qualifying criteria applies)
+ Opportunities to improve your professional development through our vast training programmes
+ On-site nursery places via salary sacrifice
+ Access to savings scheme via salary sacrifice with Northumberland Community Bank
We are proud to be one of the country's top performing NHS trusts - rated 'outstanding' overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We provide a range of health and care services to support more than 500,000 people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside across the largest geographical area of any NHS Trust in England. Our teams deliver care from hospitals, a range of community venues and people's homes. Our hospitals include a specialist emergency care hospital (the first of its kind in England), three general hospitals and community hospitals. In the community we deliver a wide range of community and public health services.
We lead in innovation and quality, having opened the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently launched our Community Promise - a pledge to make a real impact not just in healthcare but on the wider factors that affect people's lives, such as education, employment and the economy.
If Northumbria Healthcare sounds like somewhere you could belong we would love to hear from you. Visit our website to catch up on our latest news.
Whilst Northumbria Healthcare are a highly innovative organisation, the use of Third Party Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a risk to the integrity of our Recruitment & Selection processes. If you use AI, and it poses a risk to the integrity your individual recruitment process, we may withdraw your application at any stage of the process.