Job summary
- Main area
- Medicine and Emergency Care
- Grade
- Band 9
- Contract
- Secondment: 6 months
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 275-2601DDoN-MEC
- Employer
- Medway NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Medway NHS Foundation Trust
- Town
- Gillingham
- Salary
- £109,179 - £125,637 per annum/pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 28/01/2026 23:59
- Interview date
- 06/02/2026
Employer heading
Divisional Director of Nursing for Medicine and Emergency Care
Band 9
Do you have the ambition and vision to deliver the Best of Care by the Best People?
Here at Medway, we pride ourselves on working together as one to ensure that our shared vision of Better, Best, Brilliant is achieved
Our Trust is a great choice for people who want to develop their career in an ambitious and dynamic environment; our employees are able to choose the coverage and supplemental benefits that best fit their needs and those of their families. This includes the promotion of flexible working opportunities across the Trust, we are able to give our employees flexibility on where, when and the hours they work.
Our culture and values are what drives Medway NHS Foundation Trust and is the heartbeat of who we are as an organisation. It is important that you understand and to refer to our values when you are completing your application and always reflect our values throughout your employment with the Trust.
Job overview
Divisional Director of Nursing - Medicine & Emergency Care (Secondment - 6 Months)
Division: MEC
Band: 9
Salary: £109,179 - £125,637 per annum/pro rata
Interviews: 6th February 2026
We are seeking an exceptional senior nursing leader for a secondment as DDN for MEC
The role is central to our ambition to deliver the Best of Care by the Best People ensuring that MEC services are safe, compassionate, responsive and well-led even during sustained operational pressure
The postholder will provide strong, visible, and credible professional leadership across acute medicine, emergency care & associated services with a focus on patient safety, quality improvement, workforce leadership & regulatory compliance
This is a hands on strategic leadership role, requiring presence, grip and the ability to lead complex improvement programmes while supporting and developing senior nursing leaders and multidisciplinary teams
You will be
- A senior registered nurse with significant leadership experience at the divisional, director or equivalent level
- Credible, visible and confident in leading in high-pressure clinical environments including emergency and acute care
- Experienced in quality improvement, patient safety, regulatory compliance and governance
- Values-driven, compassionate and committed to developing people and improving patient experience
- Able to balance operational reality with professional standards, providing calm decisive leadership during periods of challenge and change
Main duties of the job
Key Responsibilities
As Divisional Director of Nursing, you will:
- Provide professional and clinical leadership for nursing and allied health professional staff across the Medicine & Emergency Care Division.
- Lead and assure delivery of high-quality, safe and person-centred care, ensuring that the fundamentals of care are consistently delivered.
- Maintain and strengthen compliance with CQC regulations, including ongoing delivery of improvement actions relating to patient safety, dignity, medicines optimisation and flow.
- Act as a key divisional leader for quality, patient safety and experience, embedding learning from incidents, complaints, audits and mortality reviews.
- Work closely with the Divisional Director of Operations and Divisional Medical Director as part of the divisional triumvirate, providing balanced leadership across quality, performance and workforce.
- Ensure clinical competence, professional standards and workforce capability are maintained and developed, including education, training and succession planning.
- Lead and support a positive, inclusive and psychologically safe culture where staff feel able to raise concerns and contribute to improvement.
- Contribute to Trust-wide nursing and quality strategy, including delivery of the Professional Nursing Agenda and stabilisation and improvement priorities
Working for our organisation
Accountability
- Professionally accountable to the Chief Nursing Officer for professional nursing standards, quality and the development of nursing services within the Division.
- Operationally accountable to the Divisional Director of Operations.
- Works closely with Trust executive colleagues and corporate teams to ensure alignment between divisional delivery and Trust priorities
Why Join Us?
This secondment offers a unique opportunity to:
- Lead one of the Trust’s most complex and high-impact clinical divisions.
- Make a tangible difference to patient safety, experience and staff wellbeing.
- Work closely with an engaged executive team committed to improvement, transparency and learning.
- Further develop your executive leadership capability in a visible, influential role.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Key Responsibilities
As Divisional Director of Nursing, you will:
- Provide professional and clinical leadership for nursing and allied health professional staff across the Medicine & Emergency Care Division.
- Lead and assure delivery of high-quality, safe and person-centred care, ensuring that the fundamentals of care are consistently delivered.
- Maintain and strengthen compliance with CQC regulations, including ongoing delivery of improvement actions relating to patient safety, dignity, medicines optimisation and flow.
- Act as a key divisional leader for quality, patient safety and experience, embedding learning from incidents, complaints, audits and mortality reviews.
- Work closely with the Divisional Director of Operations and Divisional Medical Director as part of the divisional triumvirate, providing balanced leadership across quality, performance and workforce.
- Ensure clinical competence, professional standards and workforce capability are maintained and developed, including education, training and succession planning.
- Lead and support a positive, inclusive and psychologically safe culture where staff feel able to raise concerns and contribute to improvement.
- Contribute to Trust-wide nursing and quality strategy, including delivery of the Professional Nursing Agenda and stabilisation and improvement priorities
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Educated to Masters level or equivalent experience
- Professionally trained managerially either via a recognised management qualification or a recognised professional development programme
- Evidence of continued professional development
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Knowledge of finance & HR Policies and Procedures in the NHS
- Clear understanding of transformation programmes and service development and improvement
- Extensive specialist knowledge of the NHS & Social Care, equivalenet to doctorate level, including infrastructure and arrangements at national, regional and local levels
- Up-to-date knowledge of NHS system reform policy and other key policy drivers. (Performance Management, operating Framework, capacity planning, payment by results, independent sector development and Foundation Trust issues)
Experience
Essential criteria
- Extensive experience in effective and supportive people management
- Expert working knowledge of performance management techniques and of using Business Intelligence solutions to work within a performance management framework
- Demonstrable and extensive experience of working at a Divisional Management Director level
- Extensive and broad ranging experience leading multiple clinical services
- Demonstrable, significant experience in implementing innovative clinically led services
- Evidence to support programme of personal and professional development
- Proven experience of successfully managing divisional-wide budgets and delivery of Trust-wide productivity and efficiency programmes
- Proven experience of leading change through people, by effective and engaging leadership
- Demonstrated capability to act upon incomplete information, using experience to make inferences and decision making.
Skills
Essential criteria
- Demonstrable ability in inter-agency communication and negotiation; including collaborative working
- Ability to analyse highly complex and contentious issues where material is conflicting and drawn from multiple sources.
- Extensive demonstrable experience of strategic planning across divisions
- Ability to analyse numerical and written data, assess options and draw appropriate initiatives Leadership, vision, strategic thinking and planning with highly developed political skills
- Demonstrable ability in implementing change and evaluation (in complex and changing environments to deliver sustainable services)
- Ability to communicate highly complex, sensitive or contentious information orally and in writing, both internally and externally, to a range of audiences
- Ability to prepare and deliver presentations and reports to a high standard (Board level quality)
- Ability to analyse and interpret highly complex information and to make judgements regarding a range of highly complex management issues
- Ability to plan, manage, adjust and deliver complex projects, involving multiple agencies and individuals and a broad range of activities, to tight deadlines
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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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.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Frances Woodroffe
- Job title
- Chief Operating Officer (Interim)
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07713 796087
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