Director of Patient and Carer Experience: Sponsorship Available

Job summary

We are seeking an experienced and compassionate Director of Patient and Carer Experience to provide strategic leadership and ensure their voices genuinely influence decisions at every level of our organisation. You will be the Trust’s senior professional clinical lead for service user and carer experience, providing leadership across experience, involvement, participation and co-production.

A central focus of this role will be strengthening the way we listen to, involve and work alongside carers and families. You will champion meaningful co-production, ensure carers and families have opportunities to influence service improvement and strategic decision-making, and help create a culture where their knowledge, experiences and contribution are recognised and valued.

You will lead the Trust wide Service User and Carer Experience Strategy and ensure learning from complaints, concerns, compliments, surveys, engagement and feedback leads to demonstrable improvements in quality and care.

We are looking for a registered healthcare professional with significant senior healthcare leadership experience and expertise in patient and carer experience, quality improvement, clinical governance, engagement and co-production. You will bring compassionate and inclusive leadership, excellent influencing skills and the ability to create trusted relationships with service users, carers, families, communities and partners.

Main duties of the job

The Director of Patient and Carer Experience is the Trust’s senior professional clinical lead for service user and carer experience. Working as part of the Patient Experience Directorate and reporting to the Chief Patient Experience Officer, the postholder provides strategic leadership, professional advice and expert guidance to ensure that the voices, experiences and outcomes of service users, carers and families are integral to the delivery, improvement and redesign of services.

The postholder will ensure that service user and carer experience is considered alongside safety, clinical effectiveness, equity and outcomes within the Trust’s quality governance framework.

As a registered health care professional, the postholder is professionally accountable for ensuring that service user and carer experience is embedded as a core component of quality, alongside patient safety and clinical effectiveness, and that learning from feedback, complaints, concerns, incidents, compliments and engagement activity results in demonstrable service improvement.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Registered healthcare professional with current registration with the NMC, HCPC, GPhC or equivalent recognised professional regulator.
• Evidence of continuing professional development and maintenance of professional registration.

Desirable

• Academic publication or research activity within healthcare quality, patient safety or service user and carer experience.

Experience

Essential

• Significant experience at senior leadership level within healthcare.
• Experience leading patient experience, involvement, engagement, complaints or quality portfolios.

Desirable

• Experience of working across different organisations within the health and social care economy

Skills

Essential

• Advanced clinical leadership skills
• Ability to present complex and emotive information to public forums and handling high profile risk incidents
• Ability to communicate issues clearly and openly with staff at all levels, from the senior leadership team to frontline staff.

Knowledge

Essential

• Comprehensive understanding of patient safety and clinical governance frameworks.
• Knowledge of health inequalities, equality legislation and inclusion frameworks.

Closing Date: 8 November 2026