Job vacancy: Head of Patient Safety Advice & Guidance, NHS England, Nationally

Job summary

Main area

Head of Patient Safety Advice & Guidance

Grade

NHS AfC: Band 8d

Contract

Fixed term: 10 months (until 1st October 2026 - Secondment only for current NHS employees)

Hours

Full time
Flexible working

37.5 hours per week

Job ref

990-MED-17473-E

Employer: NHS England
Employer type: NHS
Site: Any NHS England base
Town: Nationally
Salary: £91,342 - £105,337 per annum (Exclusive of London Weighting)
Salary period: Yearly
Closing: 28/09/2025 23:59

Head of Patient Safety Advice & Guidance

NHS AfC: Band 8d

Our Organisation

The NHS is building a culture that is positive, compassionate and inclusive – and we all have our part to play.

As employers we are committed to protecting and promoting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all our colleagues. This underpins our values as set out in the NHS Constitution and supports us to be an Employer of Choice, while helping our colleagues to deliver high quality services for our patients and communities.

As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a ‘home’ office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.

We are an accredited Living Wage Employer which means that every colleague working for our organisation and third-party contractors will earn a real Living Wage. We are one of over 15,000 organisations, who voluntarily chose to pay the real Living Wage.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Essential criteria includes:

Experience of working in either a patient safety or senior leadership role within healthcare.
Effective stakeholder management at all levels, maintaining relationships with key and high-profile stakeholders, such as key strategic regional and national policy makers.
Experience of working with information, interpreting, presenting and publishing potentially challenging information that will lead to improved patient safety.
Significant experience of leading, managing and motivating teams of multi-skilled people to deliver corporate business objectives and through periods of change.
Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work with and through others. Excellent communication skills, verbal and written including report writing.

Skills and experience we are looking for include:

Excellent communication skills and ability to provide complex information
to a wide range of internal and external stakeholders.
Ability to build and nurture key relationships and maintain networks internally and externally, on a local, regional and national level.
There will be occasional travel across England with the need for overnight stays (where relevant), some of which maybe consecutive. Hybrid working is supported for this role.

You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.

Secondments

Applicants from within the NHS will be offered on a secondment basis only, agreement should be obtained from their employer prior to submitting the application.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

Healthcare professional with relevant clinical qualification and registration.
Extensive and senior experience in patient safety investigation, clinical governance and/or clinical risk management.

Knowledge and experience

Essential criteria

Proven and significant experience of working across a wide range of clinical specialties/environments.
Proven and significant clinical knowledge, supported by evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development.

Desirable criteria

Proven and significant knowledge and experience of national-level patient safety policy and strategy development and delivery

Skills Capabilities & Attributes

Essential criteria

Well developed communication skills with the ability to communicate on highly complex matters and difficult situations.
High level analytical skills and the ability to draw qualitative and quantitative data from a wide range of sources and present in a clear concise manner.

values and behaviours

Essential criteria

Values diversity and difference; operates with integrity and openness.
Personal resilience and ability to provide emotional support to direct reports and colleagues when developing advice and guidance in response to incidents of a distressing nature,

Our commitments to you

We are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better patient outcomes. We strive to ensure our people feel trusted, valued and empowered. We’re passionate about nurturing and developing people. When you join us, we want you to grow and excel, and we offer many opportunities for you to do that. We welcome your talent and enthusiasm irrespective of age, disability, neuro-divergence, sex, gender identity and gender expression, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have policies and procedures to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability and/or who are neuro-divergent.

We welcome applications from disabled candidates. If you meet all the essential criteria, you will be guaranteed an interview.

Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role. Whilst we appreciate that you may have had support with your application (e.g., using AI technology or guidance from a trusted individual), it’s important that the information contained within your application reflects your own knowledge, skill, and experience and we trust that you apply on that basis.

If applying for this role on a secondment basis, please make sure you have obtained prior agreement from your current line manager to apply for this position.

Please note that we currently do not accept applications via recruitment agencies.

To comply with the HM Government Functional Standard GovS 007, and specifically the Personnel Security Standards 2024, individuals employed or contracted by NHS England may be required to undergo a Baseline Personnel Security Standards check, dependent on the role.

The NHS Business Services Authority is responsible for the processing of your application; a privacy notice is attached to advise you on how we will process your personal data.

If you have applied via NHS Jobs, your submitted application will be imported into our preferred third-party recruitment system. All subsequent information regarding your application will be generated from apps.trac.jobs. If you are appointed to a post, information will also be transferred into the NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

You will not be able to track the progress of your application or receive messages through NHS Jobs, and furthermore, as an employer, we will not be able to respond to any emails sent to us via NHS Jobs. If you have a query relating to your application, please contact the recruitment team on [email protected] or 0300 330 1369. You can view our Privacy Notice here.

NHS England