Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Chief Nurse  

Competitive Salary

Swindon

We provide secondary & community services as well as via our own Primary Care Network to hundreds of thousands of patients across Swindon Wiltshire, West Berkshire, South Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire each year.

We do this through an incredibly talented and caring group of individuals – c4,500 in total - who have committed themselves to serving their local community the biggest component of which are our nursing, midwifery and AHP colleagues and we want you to join us to lead this group of staff.

As a secondary, community and primary care provider we have a once in a generation opportunity to think and act differently in how we provide care.  Not many places in the country are doing this to its full potential but Swindon has the chance to be right up there building on the success of the improvements we have made to community health services in 2016 and latterly to two GP practices since the end of 2019.

We are ambitious for our patients, our community and our staff and we want to use this time following the first phase of the Covid pandemic to use as a catalyst for genuine change for our local communities playing our part not only in improving health outcome but life chances too.  

To do this we are recruiting a new Chief Nurse who is equally ambitious to drive improvement in the quality and sustainability of care.

The challenges facing the NHS are no different here in Swindon – particularly in light of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Swindon is one of the fastest growing areas in the country and we are deliberately looking many years ahead to ensure the services we are providing and developing benefit not just patients today but tomorrow and the day after. 

Despite these challenges, we are investing heavily in our infrastructure – from a space perspective through our Way Forward Programme to develop an expanded and Integrated Front Door with a new model of care that has been truly clinically led; and a successful charitable fund campaign with Oxford to develop a Radiotherapy Centre.  And also from a digital perspective with Board commitment to invest to ensure our IT and digital infrastructure is better able to meet the needs of our staff and improve our efficiency.

Whilst essential, these are just the tools to do the job and the real potential exists within the 4,500 staff and volunteers who work here.  We are investing in developing leadership capacity and capability seeking to give all our staff the skills to deliver the healthcare of the future.  Underpinning all of this is our ambition to deliver a Trust-wide OD programme with a clear commitment to embedding QI and the patient & service user into everything we do.

Nurses, midwives and AHPs are key to the change we want to deliver for our patients, our community and our staff.   

We are now seeking a Chief Nurse to join us as a key member of the Executive Team and Trust Board.  Responsible for the clinical leadership of all nursing, midwifery, allied health professional and healthcare science staff, you will be a credible and ambitious leader.  With values that match our own, including a genuine and proven commitment to diversity and inclusion; and the resilience and tenacity to embed a culture of ambition and ownership across a diverse cohort of staff, this is an opportunity which will offer reward and challenge in equal measure. 

Not many places in the NHS can offer the breadth of experience of secondary, community and primary care all under one organisation and the chance to deliver change in all of those settings.  This role will therefore only suit someone who is relentless in the pursuit of improvements for all the people we serve; curious in how we ensure our Trust and the local system is greater than the sum of its parts; truly inclusive and compassionate in how they lead.

Whilst our senior team does not yet fully reflect the people we serve we are absolutely committed to ensuring it will. We will support any successful candidate to be the best of themselves here at Great Western Hospitals NHS FT.  We would therefore like to encourage applicants from any under represented groups.

If you believe that you have the experience, skills and ambition required for this role, please contact Melanie Shearer at GatenbySanderson on 07785 616 548 or visit our website.

Closing date for applications is Monday 28^th September 2020.