Ophthalmology Unit Manager

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust; West Midlands; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 56,000; Full time

Job summary

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust is seeking an Ophthalmology Unit Manager to lead our busy eye unit and ensure safe, timely, high‑quality patient care. You will manage day‑to‑day clinic operations, staffing, and drive service improvements while supporting a multidisciplinary team across two sites.

The role emphasizes strong leadership, adherence to NHS priorities, ongoing professional development, and a commitment to patient safety and high standards of care in ophthalmology.

Qualifications

• Degree in Nursing/Health Studies (RN/Registered Nurse)
• Ophthalmology postgraduate qualification or equivalent
• ENB/ILS/ALS training relevant to medical specialties
• Active continued professional development
• Experience leading nursing teams in a clinical setting

Responsibilities

• Provide strong visible leadership to nursing staff across the department
• Develop and lead outpatient teams and staff development
• Ensure accurate nursing registrations and adherence to NMC standards
• Implement quality initiatives and infection prevention practices
• Organise ophthalmology on-call roster and escalation processes
• Foster a culture of patient safety and service improvement

Skills

Nurse management articulation

Presentation skills

Evidence-based practice

Audit processes

Change management

Resource management

Business planning

Guidelines and policies

Education

Degree in Professional Nursing/Health Studies

Ophthalmology Post graduate certificate

ENB course in Medical Specialties

ILS/ALS

CPD evidence of continuing professional development

Job description

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust

Ophthalmology Unit Manager

The closing date is 24 November 2026

We are looking for an experienced, motivated, compassionate Ophthalmology Unit Manager to lead our busy eye unit.

You will be responsible for day to day running of clinics and staffing, ensuring that patients receive safe, timely and high quality care.

As a visible and approachable leader you will support and develop a multi disciplinary team, working closely with clinicians, Nurses and management to maintain a safe environment and drive service improvements.

This is an exciting opportunity for a Registered Nurse with strong leadership skills to make a real difference to patient care and staff wellbeing.

Main duties of the job

Establish, develop, maintain, monitor and facilitate the delivery of services at departmental level, across two sites ensuring services provided meet organisational objectives, divisional service strategies and quality accounts.

About us

Come and join a Trust rated Outstanding by the CQC. South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust have been rated as outstanding following our latest inspection by the CQC and we are recruiting new staff to come and help us improve even further. In addition our staff survey results have placed us 4th in the country for recommended place to work.

We provide services across Warwickshire and beyond ranging from Hospitals in Warwick, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Royal Leamington Spa and Shipston-on Stour to Community Services across the county. We are a progressive, expanding organisation with great ambition around improving quality, integrating pathways and delivering high levels of productivity.Our values can be summed up in one sentence. We are 'Trusted to provide safe, inclusive, effective and compassionate care'. Throughout the recruitment process you will be asked to think about how you demonstrate these values and how they impact on your work. It doesn't matter what role you do, whether it is patient facing or not, we are all working in the same way with our values at the core.

As part of our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion we encourage all applicants to complete a short survey. This can be accessed via the link below:

https://forms.office.com/e/ahWY3eAGM2

We appreciate you completing the survey.

Job responsibilities

Key Result Areas:Professional/ClinicalTo provide strong visible leadership to all staff within the Department and across the organisation, ensuring that nursing practice is up to date, evidence based and cost effective.To develop the outpatient teams, individuals and self to enhance performance, ensuring that staff training needs to meet organisational objectives are pursued through the principles of IPR and PDP and knowledge & skills framework, in accordance with Trust Policies and procedures.To be responsible for own professional registration and ensure that all nurses working on the ward have valid NMC registration and practise in accordance with the NMC Code, Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics for Nurses and Midwives and in accordance to Trust policy, ensuring a robust system is in place to checking registered practitioners registration status.Provide leadership for the implementation of the quality initiatives such as Essence of Care benchmarking.Ensure a strong team focus on high quality, clinically effective healthcare that meet our patients needs, is embedded in ward culture.Create and maintain a strong culture of Infection Prevention & Control awareness & practice and ensure robust systems are in place to measure IP&C standards, celebrate & share good practice and develop & review action plans to address deficiencies.Develop, maintain and review annually the departments philosophy so that this continually reflects the aims of the team, division and organisation.Develop and lead teams that seeks to actively resolve compliant/concerns at local level ensuring appropriate escalation of complaints, clinical incidents or near misses.To be responsible for organising the Ophthalmology on-call roster.Foster and embed a patient safety culture and participate in national and local patient safety work streams or campaigns to improve the patients environment and experience such as Patient Safety Thermometer.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Degree in Professional Nursing/Health Studies
• Ophthalmology Post graduate certificate or equivalent experience
• ENB course in Medical Specialties
• ILS/ALS
• Evidence of continuing professional development

Experience

• Experience in nurse management
• Experience of change management
• Experience of general medicine
• A minimum of 2 year experience at band 6 within acute hospital setting

Skills

• Presentation skills and relevance to question
• Sound knowledge of evidence based practice
• Knowledge and experience of audit process
• Evidence of involvement in change management
• Sound resource (human and finance) management skills
• Some knowledge of business planning
• Experience of writing guidelines/protocols & policies

Personal Qualities

• Can demonstrate characteristics of effective leadership
• Demonstrates ability to motivate, train and develop staff
• Is innovative, positive and has ability to stimulate a productive team Able to set/achieve individual/team objectives and meet deadlines
• Able to role model both clinically & managerially

Other job requirements

• Up to date with current NHS priorities and nursing issues
• Passes Occupational Health Clearance
• Flexible and adaptable in meeting changing service demand
• Experience of project work and report writing

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust