Patient Experience & Clinical Safety Specialist #1201

Douglas Macmillan Hospice; Stoke-on-Trent; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 56,000; Full time

Job summary

Douglas Macmillan Hospice is seeking a Patient Experience & Clinical Safety Specialist to lead patient safety culture and drive systems-based improvements across the organisation.

You will embed PSIRF principles, coordinate with the quality team, and promote learning from incidents, debriefs, and risk assessments while supporting staff training and policy development.

Qualifications

• GMC/NMC/AHP registration and degree-level education are required.
• Post-registration clinical experience is essential.
• Evidence of ongoing professional development is required.
• Willingness and ability to travel independently in the locality with a suitable vehicle.
• Quality improvement training is desirable for this role.
• Leadership/management experience or qualification is beneficial.

Responsibilities

• Provide patient safety expertise and leadership within the hospice and support ongoing patient safety culture.
• Embed PSIRF framework and support staff in learning from debriefs and incidents.
• Lead quality checks of incident learning and ensure proper review methods are followed.
• Maintain a current risk/incidents action plan tracker and update regularly.
• Promote patient safety insights from incidents, risk assessments, audits and feedback.
• Challenge and support governance groups to ensure robust reviews and actions.
• Communicate safety issues clearly to governance committees with recommended improvements.
• Analyse clinical incidents to identify trends and provide tailored reports.
• Develop and implement plans to enhance patient safety and service quality.
• Identify clinical risks due to new services or software and escalate as needed.
• Provide independent input on complaints with clinical director support.
• Support teams in managing risks with appropriate escalation.
• Maintain risk registers in coordination with senior clinical directors.
• Oversee Duty of Candour where applicable.
• Provide input on audits and monitor implementation of recommendations.
• Contribute to policy/procedure development with SLG leads.
• Oversee Medical devices log.
• Collaborate with Quality and Assurance Developer and Health & Safety Lead.

Education

GMC or equivalent clinical Nursing / NMC / AHP professional registration

Educated to degree level

Quality improvement training

Tools

Microsoft Office Suite

Job description

Patient Experience & Clinical Safety Specialist #1201

Are you passionate about fostering a 'just culture' and driving systems-level change to improve patient experience?At Dougie Mac, we are committed to delivering the highest quality of patient care. We are seeking a dynamic and collaborative Patient Experience and Clinical Safety Specialist to work closely with our quality and compliance developer. This is a fixed term position for 18 months.In this vital role, you will work interdependently to integrate learning, identify risks, and champion opportunities for lasting change. You will use your expertise in systems thinking and human factors to reshape how we approach patient safety, ensuring a fair, open, and learning-focused environment.

Main duties of the job

• Lead & Support: Guide multi-professional responses to patient safety incidents, tailoring your approach to both new, under-recognised issues and long-term safety challenges.
• Embed Core Principles: Have oversight on patient safety processes by embedding systems thinking, human factors understanding, and PSIRF principles across all Dougie Mac functions.
• Drive Integration: Work closely with the wider quality team leads to ensure learning from patient care is fully integrated and escalated appropriately.
• Support and develop Patient Safety, Risk and Quality Improvement training to staff across the hospice.

About us

Dougie Mac provides compassionate care and support for adults, young adults, and children with life-limiting conditions across Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire. As a values-driven organisation, we strive to deliver high-quality, person-led, and inclusive care across our inpatient, community, and supportive care services. Following our merger with Approach Dementia Support and expansion into children and young adult services, Dougie Mac now supports more people than ever before across all age groups and diagnoses.Our team is made up of dedicated, skilled professionals who are committed to delivering responsive and meaningful care in line with our hospice values. We offer a collaborative working environment with access to professional development, reflective practice, and staff wellbeing support.Dougie Mac is proud to be a financially independent local charity, offering a competitive salary and benefits package including generous annual leave, contributory pension scheme, funded study opportunities, hospice-paid healthcare cash plan, and free on-site parking.

Job responsibilities

1. 1.Provide patient safety expertise/leadership within the hospice; demonstrating compassionate leadership, visibility and supporting the continued development of the patient safety culture.
2. 2.Embedding PSIRF framework and supporting staff to identify patients learnings from AAR/debriefs.
3. 3.Lead the quality check of incident learning responses and reviews, ensuring that the correct review methodology is used, and any guidance is complied with.
4. 4.Maintain an up-to-date patient safety incident investigation and PSIRF learning response action plan tracker.
5. 5.Promote patient safety insight as an approach that incorporates understanding all sources of patient safety intelligence, including from incidents, risk assessments, investigations, mortality and morbidity reviews, inquests, research, clinical audits, positive experience, compliments and complaints, patient surveys.
6. 6.To provide challenge and support to quality and clinical governance groups, to ensure the robustness of incident reviews, learning, recommendations and actions.
7. 7.Communicate patient safety issues, including the definition, framing, escalation and presentation of identified issues, risks and proposed improvement to quality and Clinical governance committees.
8. 8.Analyse clinical incidents, identify trends and support systematic reviews of patient safety and provide tailored reports when required.
9. 9.Develop and implement improvement plans that enhance patient safety, service quality and clinical effectiveness.
10. 10.Identification and escalation of clinical risk including impact of new service expansion or introduction of new software.
11. 11.Provide consistent independent response to clinical aspects of complaints supported by relevant clinical director.
12. 12.Support teams in identifying, assessing and managing clinical risks, ensuring appropriate escalation where required.
13. 13.Maintain and update risk register in coordination with senior clinical directors.
14. 14.Duty of Candour oversight where applicable.
15. 15.Clinical input into what we audit and monitor implementation of recommendations and outcomes.
16. 16.Support the review and development of policies, procedures with other SLG clinical leads.
17. 17.Oversee Medical devices log.
18. 18.Support and develop Patient Safety, Risk and Quality Improvement training to staff across the hospice.
19. 19.Work collaboratively with Quality and Clinical Assurance Developer.
20. 20.Work collaboratively with Health and Safety Lead.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• GMC or equivalent clinical Nursing / NMC / AHP professional registration
• Significant post-registration clinical experience
• Evidence of recent commitment to relevant ongoing professional development
• Ability to travel independently throughout the locality with access to suitable vehicle for business purposes
• Educated to degree level
• Quality improvement training
• Leadership and/or management qualification or relevant experience

Experience

• Wide experience in Patient Safety activities
• Demonstrate experience of handling complex or contentious patient safety incidents
• Experience in delivering training
• Experience in delivering change in complex clinical systems
• Experience of working both independently and as part of a multidisciplinary or wider team
• An understanding of person-centered and individualized approaches to care and working in this way
• Experience of dealing with complex and/or sensitive information and unpredictable situations
• Experience in use of Quality Improvement / audit methodology
• Experience at reporting level
• Project management and planning experience

Additional Criteria

• Deep understanding of patient safety strategies, PSIRF, clinical governance, and CQC requirements
• Excellent time management and organizational skills
• Ability to write policies and procedures
• Strong analytical, report-writing, and presentation skills
• Advanced communications skills training
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to initiate, influence and grow relationships
• IT skills including Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint)
• Ability to adapt to change
• Ability to motivate others
• Compassionate and respectful approach
• Able to communicate clearly and sensitively, adapting to the audience
• Resilience and ability to remain calm under pressure
• Enthusiasm and interest in ensuring others are trained and developed in patient safety, as appropriate
• Actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional development
• To be able to meet the requirements of the post
• Present a professional appearance appropriate to the role
• Team commitment
• Knowledge of performance management
• Training in clinical safety or risk management or PSIRF framework
• Conflict resolution training
• Ability to exercise initiative for service improvement
• Ability to relate to the multi-disciplinary team within the hospice

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.