Matron - Acute and Emergency Medicine

Matron (Band 8a)

University Hospital Lewisham - Acute and Emergency Medicine Directorate

We are seeking to recruit a dynamic motivated individual to join the Matron team for acute medical wards with Lewisham Medicine and community division. The ward for this post are: Cherry and Mulberry which are our cardiac and respiratory wards which includes a 5 bed area for level 2 patients requiring acute ventilation.

The successful individual will have a pivotal role in delivering the Trust and departments objectives in ensuring that the care delivered within this specialty reflects the Trust vision and values.

The successful applicant will be an experienced registered nursewith a positive and inclusive leadership style. If you are a dynamic, energetic, enthusiastic senior nurse we would love to hear from you.

The role of the Matron will focus on the provision of high quality, visible, professional leadership, setting and maintaining standards of clinical excellence, improving outcomes and experiences for patients, families, carers as well as staff. The successful candidate must have the ability to provide positive leadership and development to the clinical teams and act as a role model in all they do.

This person will be supported by head of nursing and the clinical and management team.

This is an exciting opportunity to work collaboratively with all professional groups, offering the successful applicant the combination of specialist nursing with hands on care.

Through strong clinical leadership the Matron will support the ward senior nurses to promote excellence in nursing care to maintain and improve clinical standards. The post holder will ensure that all patients are treated with compassion, dignity and respect placing value on the diversity of the local community and beyond. He/she will promote best practice in the prevention of infection through ensuring a clean and safe environment, and that clinical practices are in accordance with Trust policy and best practice guidelines to minimise the risk of infection.

The Matron’s key responsibility is to ensure that the patient experience is of the highest quality inspiring patient and public confidence. This will be achieved through high visibility, accessibility and surveillance.

The Directors, the General Managers and the Heads of Nursing lead each Directorate. The Matrons report directly to their Head of Nursing who has overarching responsibility for the operational management and strategic direction of nursing.

This is a generic job description. Additional specific responsibilities and requirements will be added depending on the speciality.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust is a community focused provider of local and acute care, providing high quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley. With a turnover of around £700 million, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham and a range of community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.

As an organisation, we’ve made significant improvements for patients and staff in the last two and-a-half years. This is reflected in our most recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection (from February 2020), which found improvements across the organisation and gave us an improved rating of “Good” in the Well-Led and Effective domains, in addition to the rating of “Good” that we had already achieved in the Caring domain. Our staff culture change programme has been key to the Trust’s improvement journey, as we’ve stabilised our workforce by reducing vacancy rates and improving staff retention. We’ve also significantly increased the representation of minority ethnic leaders across our clinical and corporate teams.

Care Provision

To manage the quality of the provision of nursing care at all times, within their ward / department by:

Holding Ward/Departmental Sister/Charge Nurse to account for delivery of their key performance indicators in clinical areas on the Perfect Ward App (mobile application devise to maximise the value of quality audits in the healthcare setting).

In conjunction with the Directorate’s Workforce Manager ensure effective action is taken where nursing performance is at risk of falling below expected levels and standards are not maintained.

Ensuring that the Trust’s nursing and Midwifery priorities are implemented locally.

To take appropriate action on issues of staff discipline, grievance, poor performance and sickness, up to but not including dismissal.

Risk & clinical governance:
Ensure patients are cared for in a clean and safe environment, including the appropriate decontamination of multi-use equipment, taking remedial action if standards are not maintained.

Be champions for driving the infection prevention and control agenda and challenging poor practice.

Manage and respond to complaints and adverse incidents, including serious untoward incidents. Liaise with the PALS Department regarding informal complaints and where possible actively diffuse complaints to avoid escalation

Undertake root cause analysis and develop action plans, ensuring that this leads to change in practice.

Ensure Risk Assessments are undertaken and action plans implemented in wards and departments