Clinical Director - Dental Services

North West Borough Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; Liverpool City Region; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading team at North West Borough Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust as a Clinical Director in Dental Services. This role involves managing community dental teams, driving strategic initiatives, and enhancing patient care standards across Liverpool and surrounding areas. Ideal for experienced candidates seeking to influence dental service delivery and improve health outcomes.

Benefits

Flexible working arrangements

Continuous Professional Development opportunities

Supportive work environment

Qualifications

• Current experience in Community Dental Service at a senior level.
• Registered for at least 5 years with GDC.
• Commitment to professional education.

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical leadership for Community Dental Services.
• Develop clinical pathways across the North West.
• Managerial responsibilities for dentists and operational colleagues.

Skills

Leadership

Clinical management

Communication

Strategic Planning

Stakeholder engagement

Education

Recognised dental qualification BDS or equivalent

Higher dental degree e.g. MFDS or relevant postgraduate qualification

Postgraduate qualification in management and leadership

Job description

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust: Clinical Director - Dental

Band C Dentist or Consultant Dentist

Includes seven sessions of clinical activity and three sessions aligned to Clinical Director role.

Join our Dental Leadership Team!

Could this be the move you're looking for?

We have a fantastic opportunity for you to join the Dental Leadership Team at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, Community Division, as a Clinical Director (Band C Dentist or Consultant Dentist).

Why join us?

Imagine being part of a new seven-year (+3) contract to deliver Special Dental Care for both adults and children, along with general Personal Dental Services. You'll work with a dedicated team of senior dentists, dentists, dental therapists, dental nurses, receptionists and support staff. Together, you'll help develop Community Dental Services fit for the future, delivering across Liverpool, Sefton, and Knowsley.

Main duties of the job

What we're looking for

We're seeking a strong clinical, strategic, and operational lead to drive, develop, and motivate our Dental Service through transformational milestones. You'll need a strategic vision to address national, regional, and local challenges faced by Dental Services. Collaboration is key, as you'll develop clinical dental pathways across the North West and build strong clinical networks across providers and local universities.

Our services include:

• Special Dental Care: Provided across eight sites in Liverpool, Sefton, and Knowsley.
• General Personal Dental Services: Delivered from two sites in Liverpool and Knowsley.
• Paediatric General Anaesthetic Extraction Services: Available at Whiston and Ormskirk Hospitals.
• Domiciliary Consultations: When necessary.

What we offer:

• Comprehensive care: From an episode of care to shared or continuing care.
• Specialist led services: For adults and children whose dental needs cannot be met within general dental practice.
• Paediatric Exodontia Contract: Providing assessment and exodontia services for children using General Anaesthetic (GA), conscious sedation, or other appropriate patient management systems.
• NHS Dental Services: Under Personal Dental Service contracts at Vauxhall Health Centre and River Alt Resource Centre.
• Outreach teaching: For dental students and post registration dental training at River Alt.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
• The Clinical Director, alongside colleagues within the Division, will input into the Trust's Strategic Plans and their implementation for all services, driving forward a culture of transformational change and high quality care.
• The Clinical Director will work with colleagues contributing to the strategic direction of the Dental Service and be a key member in regional and national clinical networks. Leadership and clinical duty split will be discussed in proportion.
• The Clinical Director will provide Clinical Leadership to all Community Dental Services, across the Trust. The post holder will work closely with Clinical Director colleagues within the Community Health Division to align strategy and standardise the delivery of services
• The Clinical Director will work closely with senior operational colleagues and be jointly accountable for dental performance and its impact upon the operational delivery of dental services. Where there may be reputational or practical impact in the accomplishment of divisional, site-specific or Trust wide goals, decisions should be made collaboratively with the appropriate respective level of oversight.
• The Clinical Director will have direct responsibility for the line management of dentists and dental clinicians within the dental service. They will have clinical line management and supervision responsibilities for senior dentists, dentists, dental therapists, group and trainees as appropriate.
• The Clinical Director will work alongside senior multidisciplinary colleagues across the Trust to ensure the appropriate stewardship of resources and the appropriate implementation of audit and quality standards e.g. NICE Guidelines.
• The Clinical Director will be supported centrally by senior medical leaders, holding responsibility for workforce planning, medicines management, education, research and innovation, and risk management.
• The Clinical Director will have devolved joint budgetary responsibility with senior operational colleagues.

The Clinical Director will be expected to:
• Be a role model for Trust values and behaviours and be highly visible to the multi-professional team
• Promote a professional culture of continuous quality improvement and work collaboratively with colleagues from across the Trust and partner organisations to establish clinically effective care pathways
• Collaborate with nursing and operational counterparts to deliver timely, quality and compassionate care to patients
• Work with the Quality and Governance Team to ensure that action plans and quality improvement activities are undertaken and completed in time to address risk identified through safety incidents, complaints, or adverse audit outcomes identified through divisional review.
• To ensure clinical audit and clinical governance procedures in the Dental Service respond to national and local requirements.
• Ensure that any risks to quality are identified, and that appropriate actions are taken to reduce, maintain or mitigate the risk within the Mersey Care governance framework.
• Ensure that community dental services maintain the essential and fundamental standards of care and safety as specified by the Care Quality Commission, and to support the Trust's work towards achieving an outstanding rating across all categories.
• Identify and develop excellent relationships with key stakeholders and work across the health community to further shape the Trust strategy for community dental services and lead local, regional and national projects as required.
• Take strategic responsibility for developing, promoting, supporting and holding to account the dental teams within community services.
• Seek and support opportunities for quality improvement, innovation, research and development.
• Lead community dental services through ongoing transformation, redesigning services as part of a wider shift towards greater integration with other providers e.g. local authorities, integrated care teams, primary care networks.
• Develop and maintain excellent relationships with the dental university to ensure continued provision of training environment for dental students.
• Ensure that patients and carers are involved as partners in the development of services and encouraged to participate and co-produce where appropriate.
• Recruit, motivate, and develop staff, and help maintain high levels of staff morale through inspirational leadership.
• Work alongside the Patient Safety Team to ensure learning follows from investigations.
• Analyse, interpret and present data to highlight issues, risk and support decision making. Attend divisional / Trust operational meetings where appropriate and if required to attend sub-committees of the Board to present service line report(s).
• Undertake an active role in clinical supervision, mentoring and be proactive in the provision of education to other members of the dental team and dental postgraduate trainees.
• Lead in developing the education and training capacity of the service.
• Support the development of other professional groups to increase the skill mix of the service.
• Contribute positively towards the delivery of a cost efficient service, working with colleagues to ensure skill mix meets service demand and keeps within agreed budget.
• Contribute to the service requirement to identify cost improvement initiatives and actively participate in realising those.

Person specification

Experience

Essential criteria

• Current experience of working within the Community Dental Service in a senior post
• The post holder must have a level of clinical experience and confidence that enables them to deliver a broad range of dental care to all categories of patients within the remit of the Community Dental Service
• Significant experience of delivering care to patients with additional support needs at a senior clinical level including treatment provision under GA.
• Registered for at least 5 years with GDC
• Management experience
• Commitment to continuing professional education that meets registration requirements but also demonstrates relevance to the Community Dental Service

Desirable criteria

• Additional experience in a specialised area, or higher training in a clinical subject.
• Previous budgetary management experience.
• Experience in providing mentoring or training
• Experience in design of CPD and audit projects
• Experience of working with National Groups
• Experience of Sedation both inhalation and intravenous
• Experience of policy development and implementation.
• Experience of monitoring and evaluation of clinical services.

Qualifications and Training

Essential criteria

• Hold a recognised dental qualification BDS or equivalent
• Have full registration with the General Dental Council and must not be subject to any restrictions on their practicing
• Higher dental degree e.g. MFDS or postgraduate qualification relevant to role in the Community Dental Service e.g. MPH, Postgraduate certificate in dental sedation and pain management, etc
• Postgraduate qualification in management and leadership e.g. MBA, etc or equivalent experience of management
• Full compliance with Core CPD and clinical audit requirements

Knowledge and Skills

Essential criteria

• Extensive knowledge of current clinical practice
• Broad based knowledge and skills in diagnosis and clinical management
• Good knowledge and skills with IT - Word-processing, PowerPoint presentations, working with spreadsheets
• Excellent communication skills
• Good organisation skills
• Ability to provide a second clinical opinion for peer colleagues in the public dental service

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge and experience of NHS organisational structures
• Knowledge and experience of working with dental services within Primary Care Department, GDS, Dental Public Health
• Delivered presentations/talks at local or national meetings relevant to dental practice
• Skills in clinical governance, patient safety and quality improvement.

Disposition e.g. Personal (transferable) skills

Essential criteria

• Good interpersonal skills, including the ability to work with clinicians and patients in difficult and stressful situations
• Chair meetings/groups effectively
• Listen and respond to others in an effective manner
• Ability to influence the behaviour of others and achieve preferred outcomes
• Operate effectively both as a team member and as a team leader
• Deal with, and where possible, negotiate and resolve conflict situations to the satisfaction of the affected parties
• Committed to quality patient care
• Responsive to change and innovation, promoting a culture for organisational change
• A flexible approach to duties, which satisfies the needs of the role in a changing environment
• Friendly and approachable
• Ability to demonstrate reflective practise with evidence of a Personal Development Plan relating to CPD and Personal Development
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team
• High professional values

Desirable criteria

• Management / leadership qualification.

Leadership

Essential criteria

• Demonstrates the principles of team leadership and effective people management
• Commitment to the values of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust

Desirable criteria

• Evidence of a role as a leader within groups

Managerial

Essential criteria

• Knowledge of dental service provision at a national and local level
• Involvement in NHS-related meetings
• Awareness of the principles and core practices involved in service management, project management and effective meetings
• Experience of management within Community Dental Services

Desirable criteria

• Involvement in service re-design
• Involvement in project delivery

Other

Essential criteria

• Ability to work flexibly according to the needs of the service, and contribute to team and skills development.
• Ability to articulate MCFT vision and values
• Evidence to support work in line with principles of a Restorative Just and Learning Culture

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [e-mail] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancies from further applications when we have received a minimum number of applications from which to make a shortlist. Please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email [e-mail]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.

Applicants requiring sponsorship may wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining sponsorship for this position by assessing themselves against the criteria on the gov.uk website - https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.

Please note: new entrants to the NHS will commence on the first pay point of the relevant band.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• Job Description (PDF, 368.4KB)
• A Great Place to Work (PDF, 2.1MB)
• Our People Promise and Charter (PDF, 5.8MB)
• Employee Benefits (PDF, 950.7KB)
• Your Recruitment Journey (PDF, 291.0KB)