Medical workforce leadership

• Provide professional leadership to doctors and dentists across the Trust, fostering an inclusive, compassionate, and high-performing medical culture.
• Directly manage Divisional Medical Directors and relevant corporate direct reports, ensuring clarity of accountability and consistent professional standards.
• Ensure robust arrangements for consultant appointment processes, appraisal, job planning, revalidation, performance management, professional development, and succession planning.
• Promote medical engagement, wellbeing, and leadership development, ensuring the medical voice informs organisational decisions and transformation programmes.
• Support productivity, workforce sustainability, and service quality through effective medical workforce planning and consultant engagement.

Quality, safety, clinical governance, and learning

• Provide Joint executive leadership and accountability with the Chief Nurse for clinical governance, clinical risk, patient safety, clinical effectiveness, complaints learning, patient safety incident investigations learning, and quality improvement.
• Work with the Chief Nurse and Executive colleagues to ensure governance systems support continuous improvement in quality, safety, and patient experience.
• Champion Quality Improvement, benchmarking, evidence-based practice, research, innovation, and the adoption of digital technologies that improve care, safety, and productivity.
• Ensure medical engagement with patient feedback, incident reviews, and organisational learning, including contribution to the Annual Quality Account and Board quality reporting.
• Promote patient, carer, governor, and community involvement in service design, delivery, and evaluation.

Education, research, and innovation

• Provide executive oversight of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education, working with the Chief People Officer, Director of Medical Education, Divisional Medical Directors, and education partners.
• Ensure doctors in training receive appropriate supervision, support, and high-quality learning environments.
• Maintain strong relationships with universities, deaneries, and education bodies, and develop future clinical leaders.
• Promote research, innovation, learning, and improvement as core components of clinical excellence.

System leadership and partnerships

• Lead and influence clinical strategy across Integrated Care Systems, Provider Collaboratives, and regional partnerships.
• Build effective relationships with NHS England, commissioners, regulators, local authorities, primary care, voluntary sector partners, universities, and other providers.
• Ensure clinical perspectives inform commissioning, service planning, integrated models of care, and transformation programmes.
• Champion population health, prevention, reduction of health inequalities, and improved outcomes for underserved communities.

Information governance and confidentiality

• Lead the work of the Caldicott Guardian and provide Board-level oversight.
• Oversee protocols and assurance arrangements relating to the lawful, safe, and proportionate use of person-identifiable information.
• Through the Caldicott Guardian work with the Information Governance function to ensure compliance with relevant legislation, standards, improvement plans, and regulatory submissions.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Full GMC registration
• Current licence to practise
• Evidence of continuous personal/professional development and appraisal

Desirable criteria

• Management qualification/postgraduate study

Experience

Essential criteria

• Consultant-level experience with a substantial track record of senior clinical leadership.
• Substantial Board-level or senior leadership experience within a large and complex healthcare organisation.
• Experience of working as part of a senior executive team with collective responsibility for organisational performance, quality, workforce, and finance.
• Significant experience of working across Integrated Care Systems, Provider Collaboratives, and wider health and care partnerships.
• Capability in inter-agency working including NHS England, commissioners, local authorities, voluntary sector, user and carer groups, primary care, and other provider organisations.
• Experience of influencing and leading beyond organisational boundaries.
• Leadership of major service review, transformation, and change programmes.
• Proven track record of leading major clinical transformation, service redesign, and quality improvement programmes delivering measurable improvements in outcomes, safety, productivity, or experience.
• Demonstrable experience of leading quality improvement initiatives.
• Demonstrable experience of improving population health outcomes and reducing health inequalities.
• Experience of working with partners to improve outcomes for underserved communities.
• Experience of managing MHPS activities.
• Experience of managing and resolving conflict.

Desirable criteria

• Evidence of leadership development at Board or Executive Director level.
• Experience leading research, innovation, or digital transformation programmes.

Skills

Essential criteria

• Ability to carry the confidence of medical staff in each Division and specialty across the Trust.
• Ability to provide visible, inspirational, and compassionate leadership within a complex organisation.
• Ability to develop and communicate a compelling strategic vision.
• Ability to lead through influence and build commitment to organisational change.
• Exceptional relationship-building skills across clinical, professional, system, and partner organisations.
• Ability to establish credibility with regulators, commissioners, NHS England, and partner organisations.
• Outstanding communication, presentation, and ambassadorial skills.
• Ability to represent the organisation effectively at local, regional, and national level.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and manage highly complex relationships.
• Strong and effective communication skills, particularly in articulating a more business-oriented approach to Trust business.
• Ability to contribute at a high level to corporate issues.
• Empathetic and purposeful about user, carer, and voluntary sector interests.
• Ability to foster inclusive, compassionate, and psychologically safe cultures.
• Ability to develop future clinical leaders and build leadership capacity throughout the organisation.
• Ability to adopt and convey the ethos of CNWL in external forums.
• Prepared to be open to challenge.
• Informed and able to lead on Clinical Governance, including clinical risk management, clinical effectiveness, research and development, and clinical audit.
• Confidence and resilience to pursue performance management issues and appraisal arrangements.
• Ability to interact effectively with senior clinical leaders and managers across the organisation.
• Effective time management and self-management.
• Ability to judge priorities and differentiate between urgent and longer-term issues.
• High-level influencing and negotiating skills.
• Ability to work both independently and as part of a team.
• Positive outlook, ambitious for improved services, and committed to achieving them.
• Ability to develop strategic vision for the Medical Directorate.

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Excellent people management skills.
• Respected in their clinical speciality.
• Knowledgeable or able to acquire knowledge about issues across all clinical areas.
• In-depth understanding of NHS policy, regulation, and contemporary healthcare challenges.
• Detailed understanding of Integrated Care Systems and provider collaboration