Job summary
- Main area
- Adult Acute Mental Health
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8b
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 367-A&UC-10186
- Employer
- Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Kingfisher Court
- Town
- Radlet
- Salary
- £66,653 - £77,094 per annum, pro rata (5% HCAS included)
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 15/04/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Deputy Head of Nursing
NHS AfC: Band 8b
Values Based Screener
At Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust we are looking for people to join us who share our values and those of the NHS. Before your application can be considered please take part on our online values questionnaire, which you can find below. When you have finished you will be sent a 'completion code' by email, which will be valid for 6 months and required to submit your application form.
Job overview
Are you a passionate and experienced nursing leader ready to make a real difference? Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust is looking for a dynamic Deputy Head of Nursing to join our Adult Acute & Urgent Care Division. This is a pivotal, high-impact role with the opportunity to shape nursing practice, strengthen clinical oversight, and improve the experience and outcomes for our service users.
As our Deputy Head of Nursing, you will:
- Provide visible, inspiring leadership to our nursing workforce across inpatient and community services.
- Lead the embedding of high standards of nursing practice, ensuring evidence-based care is delivered consistently.
- Drive quality improvement initiatives, using insight from incidents, complaints, and feedback to improve care.
- Support and deputise for the Head of Nursing, influencing strategy and shaping the future of nursing across the Division.
You will work in a forward-thinking, collaborative environment that values innovation, professional development, and patient-centred care. This is a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact on the delivery of mental health services and to lead a team of dedicated, skilled professionals.
Main duties of the job
Are you a passionate and experienced nursing leader ready to make a real difference? Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust is looking for a dynamic Deputy Head of Nursing to join our Adult Acute & Urgent Care Division. This is a pivotal, high-impact role with the opportunity to shape nursing practice, strengthen clinical oversight, and improve the experience and outcomes for our service users.
As our Deputy Head of Nursing, you will:
- Provide visible, inspiring leadership to our nursing workforce across inpatient and community services.
- Lead the embedding of high standards of nursing practice, ensuring evidence-based care is delivered consistently.
- Drive quality improvement initiatives, using insight from incidents, complaints, and feedback to improve care.
- Support and deputise for the Head of Nursing, influencing strategy and shaping the future of nursing across the Division.
You will work in a forward-thinking, collaborative environment that values innovation, professional development, and patient-centred care. This is a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact on the delivery of mental health services and to lead a team of dedicated, skilled professionals.
Working for our organisation
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission.
Our family of over 4,500 members of staff provide health and social care for people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. Everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The Deputy Head of Nursing is a core member of the Division and senior management team. They will work with the Head of Nursing to ensure all aspects of operational nursing is delivered to agreed high standards, providing the best possible experience and outcomes for service users.
The role of the Deputy Head of Nursing fundamentally centres on improving the patient experience. The role will oversee and champion evidence-based care and ensure that the fundamentals of care are actioned and evidenced to ensure high standards of care and support are in place across the different clinical pathways and services. Improving service user experience encompass how service users and their carers / families are involved in service development and delivery and how feedback is incorporated into practice and care decision-making.
The three main objectives of the role include:
· Working collaboratively with the Head of Nursing in promoting visible, outstanding nurse leadership, and be able to cover the responsibilities of the Head of Nursing when required.
· Providing leadership to clinical and direct care staff across the business unit, to promote, influence and ensure high standards of care are maintained through providing a visible, accessible and authoritative presence in wards for patients and their families.
· Ensuring that practice governance and support services are coordinated across the division to improve patient experience
The underpinning principle is to have a professional leader who is accountable for co- coordinating safe, high-quality care to improve patients’ experience.
As an integral member of the of the Division management team the post-holder will support the development of governance structures that ensure learning from serious incident, other incidents and complaints are embedded in practice.
The post holder will work with minimal guidance, to support the strategic and business objectives for the Division and the Trust. They will be required to use their own professional judgement, gained from extensive experience, and professional, clinical and managerial knowledge to interpret and address a wide variety of operational nursing issues.
Accountable and responsible for providing the operational leadership of the registered and non-registered nursing work force of the Division to ensure delivery of a properly resourced, capable, competent nursing work force to support the highest standards of healthcare.
· Working in partnership with the senior operational and clinical leaders in the Division to support them to:
o Identify improvement opportunities through analysis and understanding of data and information, curious reflection and critical thinking
o Deliver measurable improvement
o Track and report on improvement projects and evaluate outcomes
· To take a lead role in ensuring that staff and others as appropriate are informed as to the purpose, principles and methods of undertaking and engaging in clinical governance activities.
·Support service and team concordance with processes for the reporting of, and learning from, incidents, including the monitoring of incident reports. Proactively use this learning to identify quality improvement initiatives.
·Research best practice and scout for innovative solutions to identified problems and opportunities
· Sharing and spreading innovation and improvement ideas; engaging with individuals and teams to both share their improvement work and to help them to gain the benefits of the work of others through understanding the core improvement idea and how they can apply it to their context
In addition to the above, the holder of this post will act as deputy to the Head of Nursing. This will be giving support and covering the responsibilities of the Head of Nursing as required.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- First level Registered Nurse ( MH) in relevant field to the post.
- Management or leadership development
- Masters Degree or Equivalent Experience
- Teaching and assessing course
Desirable criteria
- Evidence of education/training in specialist area (i.e., therapies, interventions, service-specialism)
- Postgraduate certificate in education or equivalent
Previous Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of working in a senior nursing post in complex mental health & learning disability settings
- Demonstrable knowledge of service issues & priorities facing mental health & learning disability services
- Experience of senior nursing leadership to achieve results across a broad range of outcomes, whilst providing senior nursing
Desirable criteria
- Experience of writing for publication and/or presenting to professionals and the public
- Experience of leading research/quality improvement initiatives, developing and evaluating new ways of working
Skills
Essential criteria
- Well-developed leadership and influencing skills with the ability to enthuse, motivate and involve individuals and teams, and have them understand the Trust’s and your performance expectations
- Ability to be intellectually flexible and to look beyond existing structures, ways of working, boundaries and organisations to produce more effective and innovative service delivery and partnerships
- Experience of improving though audit, benchmarking and using evidence-based approaches
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Application numbers
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Shaun Miles
- Job title
- Head of Nursing
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07966554351
If you have problems applying, contact
- Address
-
The Colonnades
Hatfield
AL10 8YE
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