Clinical Safety Officer

We provide healthcare services to people living in Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf county borough areas, serving a population of around 450,000. We are ideally situated between Wales’s capital city, Porthcawl to the west, and the stunning scenery in the Brecon Beacons.

Our vision is to care for our communities and patients by preventing ill-health, promoting better health, providing excellent services and reducing the need for inpatient care wherever possible through the provision of strengthened home, primary and community care.

We value the diversity of our staff and welcome applications from people from protected groups under the Equality Act 2010, this specifically includes age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/reassignment, race/nationality, religion/belief, disability, pregnancy and maternity and marriage and civil partnership.

Cwm Taf Morgannwg is a Living Wage Employer.

Please check your email account regularly. Successful applicants will receive all recruitment related correspondence via the email account registered on the application form.

All applicants are invited to apply in Welsh or English, and no preference will be given to applications submitted in either language.

Job overview

The Clinical Safety Officer will provide expert clinical advice/specialist support to the UHB, on issues relating to clinical risk management/patient safety assessment associated with the UHB’s Digital, Data and Technology services for procurement, design and development, implementation of third party systems and operational life cycle.

The post holder will support the development, integration and embedding of the UHB’s clinical assurance process which focuses on the patient safety assessment of the UHB’s digital, data and technology services at the design, development and final testing phases before they are handed over to the service for operational use.

The post holder will be pro-active in deploying and motivating UHB and external clinical, technical and project staff to commit time and effort to the risk management/risk assessment process so that UHB’s products can be signed off as fit for use in real operational and clinical environments.

The post holder will support the development, integration and embedding of the UHB clinical assurance process, which focuses on the patient safety assessment of the UHB’s digital, data and technology services in the operational phase of the life cycle.

• Provide assurance to the UHB, with responsibility for patient safety on all matters relevant to the clinical assurance activities within CTMUHB associated with digital, data and technology services.
• Interpret statutory legislation and guidance for the development and monitoring of risk management policies, procedures, protocols and safe systems of work.
• Actively promote the development of a risk awareness culture within the organisation, so that risk management is an integral part of UHB’s business associated with digital, data and technology services.
• Develop and maintain effective relationships with external agencies who are stakeholders in the governance and risk management agendas and Trust/UHBs, Digital Health Care Wales (DHCW) and Welsh Risk Pool, acting as a focal point of contact.
• Lead CTMUHB’s Clinical Assurance Process across the entire UHB programme from “end to end”, i.e. ranging from the scoping and design phases of UHB health software products to final testing, early adoption of digital, data and technology services through to decommissioning.

This post is fixed term/secondment for 22 months to meet the needs of the service.

If you are interested in applying for the secondment position, you must obtain permission from your current line manager prior to applying for this post.

Working for our organisation

Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board is part of the NHS Wales family. Our Health Board provides primary, secondary and community health and wellbeing services to around 450,000 people living in three County Boroughs: Bridgend Merthyr Tydfil, and Rhondda Cynon Taf.

We live by our core values:

• We listen, learn and improve
• We treat everyone with respect
• We all work together as one team

We are a proud local employer; around 80% of our 15000 workforce live within our region, making our staff not only our lifeblood of our organisation but of the diverse communities that we serve.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click “Apply now” to view in Trac

• Provide assurance to the UHB, with responsibility for patient safety on all matters relevant to the clinical assurance activities within CTMUHB associated with digital, data and technology services.
• Interpret statutory legislation and guidance for the development and monitoring of risk management policies, procedures, protocols and safe systems of work.
• Actively promote the development of a risk awareness culture within the organisation, so that risk management is an integral part of UHB’s business associated with digital, data and technology services.
• Develop and maintain effective relationships with external agencies who are stakeholders in the governance and risk management agendas and Trust/UHBs, Digital Health Care Wales (DHCW) and Welsh Risk Pool, acting as a focal point of contact.
• Lead CTMUHB’s Clinical Assurance Process across the entire UHB programme from “end to end”, i.e. ranging from the scoping and design phases of UHB health software products to final testing, early adoption of digital, data and technology services through to decommissioning.
• Lead on the development, implementation and maintenance of Clinical Assurance processes and procedures, to identify and manage risks, thereby ensuring CTMUHB is compliant with legislative requirements.
• Provide specialist advice to the CNIO/CCIO/Clinical Directors/Director of Digital on the Clinical Assurance process on all aspects of patient safety, and the management of the process associated with digital, data and technology services.
• Communicate the need for clinical risk initiatives associated with UHB products in the NHS to groups of professional and managerial staff that view them as time consuming, costly in terms of resources, bureaucratic and adding no value to their work.
• Deal with expectations of the NHS staff, patients and the public which cannot always be achieved.
• Support investigations of clinical incidents associated with UHB digital, data and technology services, including root cause analysis.
• Demonstrate experience and success in leading and participating in change management projects.
• Able to represent CTMUHB at national organisations, and articulate its goals in a manner commensurate with the perspective of individual organisations.
• Manage a multi-faceted role, requiring a wide breadth of knowledge of both the NHS and clinical risk. There will be a requirement to have a specialist field of expertise.
• Manage the dissemination of incident data with independent contractors, clinical staff, managers, Executives and clinical governance leads for the benefit of sharing learning. Sensitivities include the risk of identifiable information being shared, media access and publication or colleagues identifying staff involved and forming a poor impression of performance.
• Formulate reports conveying complex and voluminous information from multiple sources concisely for their link Health Boards, Health & Social Care Information Centre colleagues, Management Team and the UHB Board as required e.g. identifying the statute changes and national agreements.
• Escalate any concerns, significant risks and/or disregard of the clinical assurance process to CCIO/CNIO/Director of Digital as appropriate.

• Provide expert specialist advice to all teams within CTMUHB relating to the UHB Clinical Assurance process.
• Work closely with the UHB project teams to ensure that they plan and complete the Clinical Assurance process in line with project and programme delivery timescales and milestones and operational release timescales.
• Where appropriate, ensure that commercial suppliers follow the UHB Clinical Assurance Process.
• Ensure that the UHB project and programme managers and clinical and technical design leads who are involved in the design and development phases of healthcare software keep accurate records of their safety assessment work so there is a robust audit trail of safety documentation.
• Ensure that there is sufficient and appropriate balance of internal and external specialist resource to carry out the UHB Clinical Assurance Process, drawing on technical input, clinical/administrative support, and a sufficient critical mass of clinical reviewers so that risk assessment can take place.
• Oversee the co-ordination and facilitation of risk assessment workshops and provide support to the project managers to create the appropriate logs and reports associated with the process.
• Lead on the evaluation of the risk workshops to identify emerging themes and subsequently report any findings to the CNIO/CCIO/Head of Quality & Patient Safety.
• Work closely with the technical staff, product design and development leads within and outside the programme to ensure that changes to UHB digital, data and technology services, required as a result of the of identification of patient safety issues, are carried out appropriately.
• Work closely with the project managers, UHB Clinical Safety Leads, national Patient Safety Managers and accredited clinicians trained in the UHB Clinical Assurance process, to identify and deploy them in safety testing work, where appropriate.
• Encourage feedback from UHB programme/project managers to inform any changes/improvements to the current UHB Clinical Assurance Process.
• Work closely with senior product specialists and service management leads to support the ongoing identification and management of clinical risks in operational services.
• Lead on the identification of the requirement to undertake clinical risk workshops, and support of workshops associated with the release of an operational service.

• Work both locally and nationally at the interface between CTMUHB, DHCW, third party suppliers, the NHS and other related organisations and groups with a particular role of “intelligence gathering” and problem identification.
• Influence organisations, by identifying key players, to make patient safety a priority.
• Communicate effectively with fellow health professionals within the wider NHS to ensure that there is good support, participation and buy-in to the process, and use this information and feedback to make improvements to the existing UHB Clinical Assurance Process.
• Engage with NHS stakeholders to inform the identification of any risks associated with the proposed IT product/systems being designed or procured by the UHB.
• Link closely with the Clinical Safety Officers and Clinical Governance Leads within the wider NHS particularly those organisations where UHB products are being developed/introduced into clinical areas within their organisations to develop a clinical incident framework that links to the UHB Clinical patient safety process.
• Be a clinical expert for external stakeholders in relation to the UHB clinical assurance process.
• Plan and organise a range of clinical safety related activities, formulating long-term strategic plans including advice to NHS organisations on clinical safety in relation to UHB products and services.
• Explain the priorities of clinical risk applicable to UHB products to all levels of staff in the NHS from UHB Board members to front-line staff. There will be a requirement to explain clearly and succinctly the solutions in appropriate language.

• Be an expert in clinical risk management.
• Be the first point of contact for risks in relation to UHB products as they are identified by the service.
• Liaise with the service and be the main link in relation to serious incidents.
• Develop, maintain and monitor the organisational Clinical Risk Register for digital, data and technology services.
• Develop a log of all UHB projects or activities which are developing health software products for use in NHS health communities and ensure that they apply the clinical assurance process.
• Escalate/report any critical or significant patient safety incidents to the CCIO/CNIO/clinical directors and ensure that any corrective actions are followed up, whether during internal product testing, or after release as part of any UHB led critical incident reporting process in place.
• Be responsible for the central storage of all patient safety documents relating to the process as they are produced by the projects.
• Analyse the risks identified in the application of the UHB Clinical Assurance process to identify repeated patterns of clinical risk and based on this make suggestions and recommendations to the CCIO/CNIO for programme wide developments to address these e.g. patient identification.
• Receive potentially sensitive clinical risk information from individual patients, NHS staff and the public requiring tact and diplomacy to ensure each issue is handled appropriately and sensitively.
• Understand and apply incident theory (Human Factors) to clinical risks of UHB products.

Person specification

Qualifications and Knowledge

• MSc or equivalent
• Specialist knowledge of the National Clinical Risk agenda underpinned by theory and experience.
• Leadership or Management qualification or experience

• CSO qualification or experience

Experience

• Substantial NHS experience working at a senior level in a risk management related role.

• Has experience in working in healthcare information technology field.
• Experience of undertaking complex investigations including root cause analysis.

Skills and Attributes

• Demonstrates good analytical and reflection skills.
• leadership skills as well as the ability to be a good team member.
• Evidence of change management

If you are eligible for the Health and Care visa, application costs are lower and you do not need to pay the annual Immigration Health Surcharge.