Associate Director of Quality (Patient Safety and Experience) North Bristol NHS Trust

Associate Director of Quality (Patient Safety and Experience) North Bristol NHS Trust Employer:

North Bristol NHS

Location:

Bristol, BS10 5NB

Pay:

Contract Type:

Permanent

Hours:

Full time

Disability Confident:

No

Closing Date:

29/03/2026

About this job Are you ready to shape patient safety and experience across what will become one of England's largest Foundation Trusts?

University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Foundation Trust and North Bristol NHS Trust are working together as the NHS Bristol Group, with the ambition to become a single Foundation Trust in Summer 2026. This transformation will enhance outcomes for patients, staff, and our wider communities.

We are seeking an Associate Director of Quality (Patient Safety & Experience) to provide strategic leadership across the Group.

You will drive an integrated approach to human factors, patient safety, and patient experience-embedding safety science, improving experience, and generating insight that supports continuous improvement.

In this highly influential role, you will align people, policy, practice, and partnerships to strengthen how we work and the impact we make.

You'll join forward thinking, ambitious organisations that value innovation, curiosity, and learning.

It's a dynamic environment with real opportunity to shape our future direction.

Are you ready to make a meaningful difference?

The Patient Safety Specialist will provide leadership, visibility, and expert support to strengthen patient safety culture, clinical risk management, and safety systems in line with NHS England PSIRF. The role depends on strong relationship building, influencing culture, and acting as a change agent across internal teams, system partners, and external agencies.

Representing the Trust at strategic forums, the post holder will help align work with wider NHS and integrated care priorities.

A core responsibility is developing and overseeing systems that collect, analyse, and act on patient feedback, ensuring insights drive learning and improvement.

The role will enhance safety mechanisms and work with divisional and corporate teams to embed best practice and compliance with governance and risk standards.

Working with the Associate Director of Quality (Insight, Clinical Effectiveness & Regulation) the post holder will use technology and data driven approaches to improve reporting, analysis, risk identification, and patient engagement, supporting the Trust's Quality Management System.

Given evolving NHS models and Group ambitions, the role requires adaptability, innovation, and awareness of emerging trends in safety science, digital safety, and patient and carer experience.

The post holder will hold clinical registration and a safety related qualification, work autonomously, and deputise for the Group Director of Quality when needed.

University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Foundation Trust and North Bristol NHS Trust are collaborating under a Joint Clinical Strategy as the NHS Bristol Group.

During Summer 2026 we aim to become a single Foundation Trust for the benefit of patients, people, population and the public purse.

Together. we employ over 28,000 healthcare professionals across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, and have been positively progressing our Joint Clinical Strategy published in March 2024. Our aim as a Group is to deliver even better care by reducing duplication, investing in frontline services, and strengthening integration across our hospitals and communities.

We are making great progress but there are still barriers to overcome and complexities to work around.

By working together as one team we firmly believe we will be able to do more than ever for the people and communities we serve.

Within the Bristol NHS Group, we know diverse and inclusive environments lead to happier and healthier teams and improved patient care and outcomes.

We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are currently underrepresented in NBT's workforce at Band 8a and above.

These include people from global majority backgrounds, disabled people and LGBTQIA people.

Please refer to the attached job description for full details of the main duties and responsibilities that the post holder is required to undertake.

Key Dimensions Staffing:Responsible for c.

42.0 WTE across the Group Quality patient safety and experience function. Budget:Direct budget responsibility for c. £2.5m, with wider influence over budgets linked to quality and governance programmes. Portfolio: Group-wide delivery leadership responsibility forPatient Safety investigation, learning response & action oversight, training and education, Human Factors strategic development and delivery, Complaints & PALS services, Patient & Carer Experience strategic planning & delivery, Sustaining and leading the development of patient and carer partners, supporting Digital safety practice

• working collaboratively with CCIO, CNIO and digital safety leads Impact:Critical to achieving and sustaining "Good" and "Outstanding" CQC ratings, enabling corporate and clinical teams to gain quality insight for assurance and improvement to enhance care delivery.

Key Relationships Internal:Group Executive Team, Group Directors, Divisional Directors, Clinical Directors, senior nursing and medical leaders.

Clinical and corporate functions: Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Pharmacy Teams, Tissue Viability services, estates, risk, digital, data and analytics teams, Emergency Preparedness, Resilience & Response (EPRR). Patient and staff networks. External:NHS England, Care Quality Commission, Integrated Care Board, academic partners, Health Education England, professional regulators (NMC, GMC, HCPC), Health Innovation network and other specialist networks, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), patient partners (including patient safety partners), voluntary/community organisations, patients, and carers.

Key Responsibilities 1 Strategic and Operational Leadership of Patient Safety and Experience Provide strategic leadership for the development and integration of Group-wide patient safety and experience strategic plans, policies and teams, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy (and national priorities). Working with the Associate Director of Quality: Insight, Effectiveness & Regulation, lead the management and continuous improvement of digital systems for patient safety and other types of incident management, PALS, complaints, patient feedback systems (including the Friends and Family Test) and contribute to the development and embedding of the Trust's approach to a Quality Management System. Working with the Quality Insights team, translate complex patient safety and experience data into meaningful narratives and insights that support clinical teams, inform executive decision-making and provide assurance to the Board. Ensure that the Trust meets national best practice in its continued development of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and implements a board approved Patient Safety Incident Response Plan (PSIRP). Lead the strategic development of Human Factors practice developing and embedding the principles, techniques and mindsets into quality improvement programmes. Lead the oversight and, where necessary, improvement of supplier performance. Provide strategic Leadership of Patient and Carer Experience Programmes to enhance patient and carer experience, ensuring alignment with national policy, NHS England frameworks, and trust-level priorities. Provide leadership and delivery oversight to ensure the collection, curation, and presentation of Patient Stories for use at the Board, in governance meetings, staff training, and quality improvement.

Ensure stories are appropriately planned and delivered for impact, taking account of the trust's strategic direction, key areas of quality improvement and are gathered in line with trust policy. 2 Patient Safety Specialist role Lead, oversee and support patient safety improvement in the Trust and ensure that systems thinking, human factors understanding and just culture principles are embedded in all patient safety processes, working in line with NHS England PSIRF requirements. Support the fundamental principle that patient safety is everyone's responsibility and support the future requirement for patient safety to be a core element of all staff training. Act as a key component of a safe system within the Trust and to influence and have direct access to the executive team, including access at no notice to elevate immediate risks or issues. Provide an overview and ability to influence and interact with all patient safety processes within the organisation and to influence the executive team to enable effective change management. Work as part of a wider team in ensuring that patient safety is appropriately prioritised and considered in the work of the organisation. Develop and sustain key relationships with medication safety officers (MSOs), medication device safety officers (MDSOs), patient safety specialists in other organisations, chairs of relevant internal patient safety and/or clinical governance committees and divisional/directorate managers and members of other safety departments, Caldicott Guardian, information governance lead, Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, Director of Infection Prevention and Control, equalities lead . click apply for full job details