Deputy Director of Nursing

Position Summary:

The Deputy Director of Nursing will act as a professional and clinical leader in supporting the Director of Nursing (DON), with the development of nursing practice and standards, nurse education, clinical pathways and care delivery models to ensure that patients, their relatives and carers have a positive experience when assessing and receiving care /services from the hospital and to ensure the overall hospital performance meets national key performance indicators. He / she will continuously evaluate and influence strategic developments in patient care delivery ensuring that high quality patient care is at the forefront. He/ She will deputise for the Director of Nursing as and when required both internally and externally as appropriate in consultation with the DON.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

The key portfolio for the Deputy DON will be:

Operational Management
• To assist the Director of Nursing and as a key member of the Nursing Executive, ensuring a service that is fit for purpose, meeting the needs of the organisation, patients, carers and other stakeholders including regulatory and professional bodies.
• To assist the Director of Nursing managing out of hours nursing services and the overall nursing administration function.
• To promote the development and maintenance of high standards of care in order that the care offered is family centred, sensitive and responsive to service users, ensuring it adheres to best practice and quality standards.
• To assist the DON to monitor nursing performance against nationally agreed operational and nursing performance indicators
• To represent nursing as the executive lead on corporate committees.
• To utilise all avenues and opportunities internally and externally to foster an interdisciplinary approach to care ensuring that the patient experience and outcome is at the forefront of corporate decision making.

Strategic Management and Service Planning
• To assist the DON with developing, overseeing and assessing performance against the nursing strategic plan
• To utilise a programme management structure to communicate the nursing service plan and ensure control and timely oversight of key deliverables against the strategic plan
• To take a lead role with DNM’s in developing the leadership capacity and capability of all clinical nurse managers across the campus ensuring alignment with strategic priorities
• To utilise effective performance reporting tool to ensure oversight and compliance against key deliverables are available to the nursing executive and CNM’s on a monthly basis
• To ensure nursing care delivery is in line or develops development plans with national clinical strategies where appropriate and national clinical effectiveness guidelines.
• To support DNM’s in establishing systems for measuring and monitoring the deliverables and patient outcomes of new service developments or advanced practice initiatives.

Quality, Safety and Clinical Governance
• To assist the Director of Nursing perform executive lead role in governance for:

 Infection Prevention and Control
 Advanced Nursing Practice
 Centre for nurse education and research
 Patient and Public Involvement
 Nurse Professional Regulation

• With the Director of Nursing & Directorate Nurse Managers ensure compliance with all relevant quality and safety standards as set out by agencies such as NMBI, HSE and HIQA.
• Encourage a culture of continuous quality improvement and mutual co-operation in the achievement of the highest possible standards of clinical care and maximum efficiency.
• Take a lead role in developing quality improvement capacity within the department of nursing for the purpose of ensuring wide scale patient care / process improvement for designated areas of care / practice.
• To be responsible for ensuring that adverse incidents involving nursing care within the hospital are investigated promptly, taking preventative / safeguarding action where necessary to ensure that patient safety is prioritised and all relevant procedures are adhered to and fully implemented.
• Act as the nursing lead for establishing and monitoring governance structures for nursing metrics and appropriate clinical audit and ensuring a mechanism is in place for feedback and action across the department to support appropriate reporting at corporate clinical governance meetings
• To assist the DON with development, monthly review and evaluation of the nursing risk register.

Professional Leadership, Education and Workforce Planning
• Provide professional and clinical leadership / direction to nursing and clinical support staff within the Hospital that supports models of care delivery required for delivering the outputs identified within the HSE national service plan, Beaumont Hospital Strategy and the Beaumont Hospital nursing strategic plan ensuring the highest standards of care, and ensures full compliance with statutory bodies – eg Nursing and Midwifery Board Ireland.
• Ensure any new professional guidelines and regulations from the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland are implemented appropriately and in a timely manner and makes appropriate amendments to governance arrangements should same be required.
• Provide direction and support to the Executive Management Team, Directorates and staff throughout the Hospital on matters relating to nursing and all associated professional standards.
• Lead the development of a nursing workforce strategy, planning and implementing workforce changes that will ensure the effective deployment of professional and support staff and align to international models of care.
• In conjunction with the DON lead the ongoing implementation of the national framework for safe staffing and skill mix and ensure the ongoing monitoring of all clinical areas against the framework using the designated software system to measure acuity, demand and occupancy
• Ensure appropriate systems are in place to ensure reliability and validity of taskforce data on the designated software system to allow for periodic review (minimum 6 monthly) of overall staffing budgeted compliments and resource deployment in each clinical area with DNM’s.
• In partnership with the DON and DHR develop strategies to measure employee satisfaction and experience within the nursing department
• In conjunction with the DON provide strategic direction to the centre for nurse education and research to ensure that practice development priorities and education programmes are strategically aligned both to nursing and corporate strategic plans
• In liaison with Centre of Education and Learning and Development to work with providers of pre-and-post-registration education for Nursing and HCA’s to ensure relevant curricula are developed and delivered to meet the service needs of the Hospital.
• To promote and maintain a culture of evidence based practice for nursing, ensuring the creation of effective local networks to share good practice and dissemination.
• Liaise with the Centre of Education & research to compile Training and Education Plans encompassing mandatory, corporate and professional development objectives and to realise the capabilities and contribution of nurses and HCA’s.
• With the Director of Nursing develop and promote corporate nursing practice and integrated patient care policies, including the development of specialist or advanced nursing for interdisciplinary team approaches to care.

HR and Finance Control & Management
• To support DNM’s in ensuring full and timely compliance with professional annual registration and associated record retention requirements in line with hospital policy.
• To lead and provide professional nursing input to disciplinary panels as required.
• To lead/partake in serious untoward incident reviews, disciplinary, grievances, and other complaint investigations as necessary.
• To assist the Director of Nursing in managing the overall nursing budget for directly managed functions.
• To act as the authorised signatory for delegated governance and corporate nursing requests, registrations, invoices and timesheets as appropriate.
• To monitor and evaluate the effective use of nursing resources, alerting the Director of Nursing of trends and performances against agreed targets and ensuring adherence to the hospital financial controls and procedures.

Key Relationships/Partnerships
• Executive Management Team
• Directorate Management Teams
• Human Resources
• Consultants/Senior Medical Staff
• Services Managers and Department Heads
• Clinical & Support Staff
• Hospital Board Members
• External Agencies and Business Partners
• Patients, Carers, Advocacy Groups
• Media
• Statutory & Voluntary Partners
• Local Community Stakeholders
• Academic Institutions/Partners

Personal Development
This post is a developmental post. Accordingly, the post holder is expected to maintain their own professional and personal development.
The post holder will be required to review personal and developmental objectives with the Director of Nursing annually.

Key Performance Criteria
• The quality and standard of nursing care evidenced by ongoing evaluation, audit and quality outcomes.
• The extent to which service plan objectives have been achieved.
• The extent to which performance objectives agreed with DON are achieved
• The extent to which there is patient satisfaction with nursing care.
• The effectiveness of financial management, in particular, ability to operate within the budget.
• The extent to which good working relationships are fostered and maintained throughout the nursing service and between nursing and other disciplines.

This job description is an outline of the post as it is currently perceived by the hospital. The post holder will be expected to contribute fully to the determination of specific objectives. This job description will therefore be subject to change in detail and emphasis in the light of that contribution and of future development which may come about as a result of the implementation of measures in the Department of Health Strategy, Health Service Executive and the Hospitals Corporate Strategy.

Selection Criteria:

Selection criteria outline the qualifications, skills, knowledge and/or experience that the successful candidate would need to demonstrate for successful discharge of the responsibilities of the post.

Applications will be assessed on the basis of how well candidates satisfy these criteria.

Mandatory:

1. Statutory Registration, Professional Qualifications, Experience, etc
(a) Eligible applicants will be those who on the closing date for the competition:
(i) Are registered, or are eligible for registration, in the Intellectual Disability
Division of the Register of Nurses and Midwives maintained by the
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland [NMBI] (Bord Altranais agus
Cnáimhseachais na hÉireann).
And
(ii) Have 7 years post registration experience
and 3 years nursing management experience at a minimum of Clinical
Nurse Manager 2 [CNM 2] 

And
(iii) Have successfully completed a post registration programme of study, as
certified by the education provider, which verifies that the applicant has
achieved a National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) major academic
Level 8 or higher award maintained by Quality & Qualifications of
Ireland (QQI) or can provide written evidence from the Higher Education
Institute that they have achieved the number of ECTS credits equivalent
to a Level 8 or higher standard in a health care or management
related area.
And
(b) Candidates must possess the requisite clinical, leadership, managerial and
administrative knowledge and ability for the proper discharge of the duties of the
office.

2. Annual registration
(i) Practitioners must maintain live annual registration in the Intellectual
Disability Division of the Register of Nurses & Midwives maintained by
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland [NMBI] (Bord Altranais agus
Cnáimhseachais na hÉireann).
And
(ii) Practitioners must confirm annual registration with NMBI to the HSE by way
of the annual Patient Safety Assurance Certificate (PSAC).

3. Age
Age restriction shall only apply to a candidate where s/he is not classified as a new
entrant (within the meaning of the Public Service Superannuation (Miscellaneous
Provisions) Act, 2004). A candidate who is not classified as a new entrant must be under
65 years of age on the first day of the month in which the latest date for receiving
completed application forms for the office occurs.

4. Health
Candidates for and any person holding the office must be fully competent and capable of
undertaking the duties attached to the office and be in a state of health such as would
indicate a reasonable prospect of ability to render regular and efficient service.

5. Character

Candidates for and any person holding the office must be of good character.