UHN Patient Safety Learning Response Lead in Northampton

We are seeking a highly motivated and compassionate Patient Safety Learning Response Lead to join the Patient Safety Team at University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN). This Band 7 role plays a pivotal part in advancing the Trust's Patient Safety Incident Response Framework by leading high-quality, person-centred investigations into patient safety incidents and driving system learning across both Northampton and Kettering sites.

The postholder will lead and coordinate patient safety reviews, ensuring investigations are robust, fair and transparent, while upholding national legislation including Duty of Candour and the Health and Social Care Act. You will work closely with patients, families, carers, clinical teams and external partners to understand the factors that contribute to incidents and support meaningful learning and improvement. This role requires excellent communication and facilitation skills, the ability to handle sensitive and highly emotive situations with empathy, and the confidence to engage with staff at all levels across the organisation.

You will produce high-quality investigation reports, identify themes and learning, and support the delivery of improvements across services. This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about improving patient outcomes and shaping the future of patient safety at UHN.

The Patient Safety Learning Response Lead is responsible for conducting thorough, impartial, and effective investigations into patient safety incidents across UHN, in accordance with the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and within the framework of Trust policies and processes, ensuring consistency in investigative practice across the NHS and other healthcare providers, as outlined by the NHS England PSIRF guidance.

The Learning Response Lead ensures that all patient safety reviews are undertaken with integrity, transparency, and a strong emphasis on learning, reflecting national expectations for openness and accountability in patient safety processes. Adherence to current legislation, such as the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and the Duty of Candour, is integral to the role, supporting a just culture and continuous improvement in patient safety and care quality.

The postholder will assist in fostering a culture of safety by focusing on continuous improvement by investigating factors in patient safety incidents; including how human factors, teamwork, tasks, equipment, workspace, culture, and organisational drivers affect behaviour, and recommending improvements. Engagement of patients, families, staff and others affected by incidents is expected of this role.

Please submit your application as soon as possible, as we reserve the right to close adverts once sufficient applications have been received. We recognise that AI tools can support application writing; however, candidates are asked to keep their use to a minimum. Responses should reflect your own experience, skills and knowledge, as over-reliance on AI-generated content may result in generic answers that do not accurately represent your abilities.

University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) brings together Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust. As a group, we are committed to improving services for our communities through collaboration, modernising care delivery and striving for excellence. Working together enables us to share expertise, strengthen services and create greater opportunities, and there may be a requirement to work across sites depending on service needs.

Our Excellence Values are Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Integrity and Courage. UHN welcomes applications from all backgrounds and is committed to an inclusive working environment. We are proud signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant and hold the Gold Award under the Employer Recognition Scheme. Candidates who identify as members of the Armed Forces community and meet the essential criteria will be guaranteed an interview.

Job responsibilities include:

• Lead and coordinate patient safety incident reviews in line with the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), ensuring investigations are timely, consistent and robust.
• Gather, analyse and interpret clinical and nonclinical evidence, including medical records, personal accounts and relevant documentation, to identify contributory factors and learning.
• Manage a personal caseload of concurrent investigations, working autonomously to deliver high-quality reviews and ensure all findings meet legal and regulatory standards, including Duty of Candour.
• Form and lead investigation teams, engaging clinical experts, patients, families, carers and multidisciplinary colleagues throughout the investigative process.
• Prepare clear, comprehensive investigation reports that outline findings, themes, lessons learned and actionable recommendations for improvement.
• Facilitate learning discussions, after-action reviews and complex meetings, ensuring sensitive and effective communication with patients, families and staff affected by incidents.
• Work collaboratively with Governance, Risk Management, Patient Experience and clinical teams to ensure recommendations are implemented and improvement actions are monitored.
• Maintain accurate records, produce data and thematic summaries for Board-level reporting, and contribute to organisational insight through learning stories.
• Participate in training, supervision and reflective practice to develop and maintain investigative skills.
• Design and deliver training to staff on patient safety investigation principles, involving patients and families where appropriate.
• Support policy development by reviewing and updating Trust patient safety-related policies and guidelines in line with best practice and national standards.
• Provide compassionate, professional communication to families, ensuring they are supported, informed and engaged throughout the investigation process.
• Lead on referrals and communication with external stakeholders, such as HSSIB and organisations providing family support following serious incidents.
• Provide line management to members of the Patient Safety Team.

Essential qualifications include:

• Additional specialist training in patient safety incident investigation, clinical risk management or relevant field.
• Educated to degree level (or equivalent level of education, training or experience) in a relevant clinical field, with current professional clinical registration appropriate to the discipline (e.g., NMC, HCPC, GMC).
• Evidence of continuous professional development.
• Training or experience as an after-action review conductor - or be willing to work towards.

Desirable qualifications include:

• Master's level qualification in a relevant subject or equivalent experience.

Essential knowledge and skills include:

• Demonstrable knowledge of patient safety principles, incident investigation methodologies, and the PSIRF framework.
• Ability to conduct effective safety investigations that meet the patient safety incident response standards set out in the national Patient Safety Incident Response Framework for England.
• Ability to effectively analyse, interpret and synthesise complex information, distilling key messages and themes and presenting issues and options to senior audiences.
• Ability to produce logical, well-written, clear, high-quality investigation reports suitable for consumption by a range of audiences, including patients and families.
• Experience of working with the general public in a public-facing service such as health care, volunteer sector support, police service, coroners service, retail, counselling, customer services.
• Ability to work collaboratively and inclusively with a wide range of staff, teams, managers, people, and partner agencies.
• Compassionate with the ability to deal with distressed and highly emotive patients/carers/relatives.
• Excellent diary management to ensure that all families and loved ones are allocated the necessary level of support.
• Use of clinical electronic systems and/or risk management systems.
• Participation in policy reviews or developments.

Desirable knowledge and skills include:

• Knowledge and understanding of NHS incident learning responses methods.
• Project management skills.
• Knowledge of the coronial process.
• Delivery of training or developing training.
• Data analysis and thematic reviews.

Key competencies/personal attributes include:

• Highly developed communication and interpersonal skills, including observation and listening.
• A desire to make a difference for the parents/carers/relatives of service users in the organisation following a serious incident.
• Sensitive to others particularly when dealing with complainants or relatives following a serious incident.
• Able to meet deadlines, and work under pressure.
• Able to secure co-operation of colleagues at all levels.

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.

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration.