Job overview

Reporting to the Director of Midwifery, the Head of Midwifery, a practising midwife, will provide leadership and direction for midwifery and nursing staff within the Women and Children’s Care Group. The post holder will act as a point of contact for advice and expertise on all matters relating to professional midwifery issues. The post-holder will hold the position of site lead for midwifery.

As part of the Women’s and Children’s Care Group the post holder will proactively involve and work with the midwifery, paediatric and gynaecology management teams so that all are fully aware of the current practice initiatives, priorities and challenges.  The post-holder will also have effective feedback mechanism to communicate Trust wide issues to midwives, nurses, midwives, operational and support staff

Main duties of the job

The post-holder will pro-actively develop the Care Groups midwifery nursing programme in line with national, regional and local Maternity and Neonatal Improvement Programme as well as the Trust Transformational and Service Development Plan. This will include taking responsibility for implementing Trust wide objectives in all areas within the Care Group in line with the Trust’s key operational priorities.

The post-holder will provide leadership which engages staff, maintains patient focus, drives change and high performance and demonstrates and develops own personal qualities as a leader.  They are responsible for effectively managing the Care Groups’ midwifery senior managers and associated financial resources, ensuring the optimal deployment of the nursing and midwifery workforce to ensure high quality patient care is delivered and monitored.  This will require the post-holder to have or develop the necessary knowledge and business skills to plan, implement and evaluate service delivery plans.

In collaboration with the Director of Midwifery and other members of the senior nursing, midwifery and Operational team, the post-holder will be involved in the planning and implementation of developments relating to nursing and midwifery throughout the Trust.

Working for our organisation

We are one of the largest hospital trusts in England, with five hospitals and community clinics serving a local population of around 800,000 people. Our vision is 'great healthcare from great people'. Everything we do is guided by our values: 'People feel cared for, safe, respected and confident that we are making a difference’. We have a new way of working at East Kent Hospitals, called 'We care'. It's about empowering frontline staff to lead improvements day-to-day. We're looking for compassionate people to be part of our improvement journey for the patients, families and carers we care for every day.