Chief Nurse (NQ00) in Leeds

We are seeking an outstanding, strategic and compassionate leader to join the organisation as Chief Nurse and Executive Director. The successful candidate will be a highly experienced senior healthcare leader with a strong and demonstrable track record of delivering safe, high-quality patient care across complex organisations. You will provide visible, values-driven professional leadership for nursing, midwifery and allied health professionals, championing excellence in clinical standards, patient experience and quality improvement.

As a key member of the Executive team, you will bring credibility, compassion and influence, inspiring confidence among colleagues at every level of the organisation. A passionate advocate for the workforce delivering frontline care, you will foster an inclusive and empowering culture where staff are supported to thrive, develop and lead improvement. Through this leadership, you will help strengthen The Leeds Way and ensure the Trust continues to deliver outstanding care for the communities it serves.

Main duties of the job: As a member of the Executive Team at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the Chief Nurse will play a key role in delivering our ambitious service transformation, ensuring our services are designed to improve patient experience while also creating a positive and supportive environment for colleagues. Working at national, regional and local levels, the Chief Nurse will help drive forward our work to address health inequalities and will be a strong and visible champion for the quality and safety of care delivered across all our services.

You will join an organisation that is fully committed to improving health outcomes for the communities we serve and recognises that supporting the health and wellbeing of our workforce is fundamental to providing compassionate, high-quality care to our patients.

About us: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest and busiest acute hospital trusts in the country. We are the local hospital for Leeds and provide specialist services for our local communities, the Yorkshire and Humber region and beyond. This means that people in Leeds have access to some of the very best care in the country and benefit from a seamless provision of all services. We play an important role in the training and education of medical, nursing and dental students, and are a centre for world class research, innovation and pioneering new treatments.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals has a budget of more than £2.1 billion and a 20,000 strong staff. Last year, we delivered close to 1.8 million episodes of care, including 109,000 inpatient admissions, 1.3 million outpatient attendances and 359,000 attendances in our Emergency Departments. Our care and clinical expertise is delivered from seven hospitals on five sites, and they are all joined by our vision to be the best for specialist and integrated care.

Job responsibilities: Please see supporting documents for full Job Description with further information on requirements of the role, the department and workflows and full person specification.

Person Specification:

• Demonstrate evidence of experience and achievement at Board level in a major healthcare organisation, preferably a complex acute teaching hospital.
• A proven track record of senior nursing leadership underpinned by an understanding of the NHS and its infrastructure.
• Extensive experience as a senior nurse.
• Experience of improving workforce planning supported by evidence of innovation through working collaboratively with partners such as universities.
• High level of managerial competency with the ability to lead and manage change in a complex and dynamic organisational environment.
• A proven track record of strategy and policy development impacting positively on the modernisation of nursing and midwifery.
• Evidence of significant experience in building effective networks at regional and national level.
• Evidence of significant experience and understanding of Quality Assurance and NHS regulatory regime.
• Significant experience in building organisational capabilities, including establishing a clear strategic vision and direction and translating this into successful outcomes.

Knowledge, Skills & Behaviours:

• Highly developed knowledge of professional nursing and midwifery standards, practice and policy.
• Extensive knowledge of NHS Strategy and Policy and its impact at system and organisational level.
• Excellent financial awareness and business acumen drawn from experience of operating successfully in multi-million pound environments.
• Excellent interpersonal skills in particular proven listening, communication, negotiating and influencing skills with the ability to inspire and motivate individuals and teams and gain consensus in a challenging environment.
• The ability to assimilate complex information and make decisions in a fast moving environment, cope with ambiguity and sustain performance in a challenging environment.
• The ability to drive improvement forward, maintain momentum and sustain a long-term view against the reality of operational and financial challenge.
• Outstanding leadership skills.

Qualifications:

• First level registered nurse (RN) with current unblemished NMC registration.
• Masters level degree or equivalent level of experience.
• Evidence of continuing professional development such as postgraduate professional or management qualification.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check: This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.