Head of Nursing – Queen Square Division

Working in conjunction with the Divisional Clinical Director and Divisional Manager, the Head of Nursing is responsible for delivering high quality clinical services, efficient operational running and strategic development of the Division. Although this role acts as the professional lead for nursing staff across the Division (including the maintaining high professional standards and developing leadership capacity within nursing teams), the role comprises part of the senior triumvirate of the Division and therefore has a responsibility to support staff of all professional backgrounds.

The Head of Nursing has specific corporate responsibility for the Division on the Quality and Safety agenda, including working with the deputy chief nurse and other members of the chief nurse’s team on issues relating to CQC compliance, patient safety, patient experience and quality improvement.

The role provides line management support to the divisional matron team, nurse consultants and the quality and safety manager; working in a matrix fashion with the rest of the divisional leadership team and other members of the directorate management teams to set objectives and monitor standards of the clinical services.

TheQueen Square Divisionis the largest Division in UCLH with a turnover of around £240m and over 2,000 staff. It comprises the services at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) in Queen Square, the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (RLHIM), the Pain Management Centre at Cleveland Street and the Gower Assessment Unit at the Epilepsy Society, Chalfont St Peter.

The NHNN is the UK’s largest dedicated neurological and neurosurgical hospital treating over 6,000 inpatients, 120,000 outpatients and 8,000 day cases each year. Established for over 150 years it provides comprehensive services for the diagnosis, treatment and care of all conditions that affect the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nervous system and muscles.

The RLHIM is the largest public sector provider of integrated complementary medicine in Europe. The hospital offers an innovative, patient-centred service integrating the best of conventional and complementary treatments for a wide range of conditions. The RLHIM operates on an outpatients clinic basis. Clinical services include women’s health, complementary cancer care, the Trust’s only allergy service, skin clinics, acupuncture, rheumatology service, children’s service, weight loss management, sleep management clinics, musculoskeletal medicine and stress management.

Queen Square provides a wide range of services – including:

• Inpatient; surgical, medical, rehabilitation, critical care and mental health services
• A full spectrum of outpatients and daycare services across neurosciences, pain management and integrated medicine
• Diagnostics – including imaging, pathology and many other diagnostic services
• Other services including pharmacy, private patient services and more

Its facilities include 6 conventional theatres and an interventional MRI suite, neuroscience critical care unit, over 200 beds, a day-care unit and extensive outpatient facilities. It also houses the Wolfson Experimental Neurology clinical research centre. There are referral pathways and shared appointments with a variety of London hospitals.

Neuroscience is one of the Trust’s strategic priorities, and it has a number of large development programmes ongoing, including the development of an outpatient rooms and MR diagnostic facility in collaboration with University College London, the ongoing refurbishment of the neuroradiology department at NHNN and redevelopment of a number of areas of the sites to provide modern healthcare environments for our patients.

The Division works very closely with UCL’s Institute of Neurology (IoN) with a focus on driving translational research into clinical practice. This partnership currently includes a major capital development project at Gray’s Inn Road (highlighted above) to build a world-class environment to fight neurological disease. The project will further strengthen the links with the IoN/Dementia Research Institute to facilitate clinical research and trials, and is due to complete in 2024. Neuroscience research at UCL is already ranked 2nd in the world, and the ambition of the division is to become the world’s leading clinical neuroscience provider.

A 20-year strategy was agreed during 2014 which is now being refreshed in light of the above estates developments and changes to the way healthcare is provided accelerated over the last 20 months.

• Delivery Plan: to contribute to the development and implementation of Trust strategic and specific delivery plans to give effect to service and business strategy, including Trust wide and external partnership working, through the development and monitoring of clinical and professional standards.
• Resources: provide professional leadership and judgements in relation to safer staffing and budget setting. Support procurements to ensure that expenditure and income is within budget, and to ensure compliance with financial protocols.
• Performance: lead performance monitoring of nursing care and professional standards with the division, to ensure that objectives and targets are achieved (internal and external) and that performance reporting requirements are satisfied. To set and maintain clinical and professional standards within nursing and promote the development of integrated interprofessional personalised care pathways.
• Stakeholder Liaison: to represent the Trust in liaison with the NHS, the community and other partnership organisations and stakeholders on all professional and patient involvement issues, in order to enhance the reputation of the Trust and receive feedback on service delivery.
• Service Improvement: in close collaboration with the Medical Director(s) and Deputy Chief Nurse, to contribute to the development of local service improvement projects; lead and participate in Clinical Board and Trust wide development programmes that contribute to the ongoing development and modernisation of services to patients.
• Education: Ensure training and education meet the Trust standards for mandated as well as professional and development training and education
• Operational: To participate in the Senior Manager (Silver) On-Call rota, to provide senior advice to Bronze on-call and to lead the Trust in adverse situations out-of- hours (such as major incidents and adverse media attention).
• Patient Experience – Support clinical teams to review local data on patient experience, complaints, PALs, National Patient Surveys and compliments. Seek to look at ways to generate feedback from and develop plans for to improvement.
• Patient Flow – Work in collaboration with site management team to create a balance between the demands of the elective and emergency flow. Provide strong leadership and have experience in proactively supporting the clinical prioritisation of patients
• Patient safety – Monitor compliance with safety guidance and best practice in the in line with Trust Governance requirements, identifying and recording risks on the risk register and taking relevant actions and dissemination the learning from incidents. Work with teams to promote ‘just culture’ which is one that balances fairness learning and accountability. Actively seek to understand relevant contextual factors that need attention.
• Staff Experience – review the recent staff experience survey, retention, staff turnover and sickness levels. Support teams locally to develop plans and activity to improve the experience of staff.

For more information regarding the main responsibilities of the role, please refer to the attached Job Description.