Fantastic Digital roles in Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust

We have some great roles out for advert to help us on our Digital journey at BHT — we’re looking for a Head of Clinical Systems, a Lead Delivery Manager and one (or more) Project Managers!

All are permanent roles and all will contribute to our Digital journey, and ride alongside our EPR programme in the next 3 years in transforming how we do care at BHT.

Our vibe

All (or most) of our job descriptions include this text….

Across our Digital portfolio we are working to the following principles:

• Putting users’ needs first
• Designing for simplicity
• Working in an agile way
• Communicating and engaging throughout

All members of the Digital Leadership team will strive towards “Applying the culture, processes, business models & technologies of the internet era to respond to people’s raised expectations” [Tom Loosemore’s definition of Digital].

Which I believe to be true! So it’s not just ‘doing the do’, it’s trying to work in different ways — all roles are part of the Digital pillar but will work across all aspects of our Acute and Community Trust.

So about the roles….

Head of Clinical Systems — Grade 8C — £67,064 — £77,274

This is a challenging, serious and exciting role looking after the configuration, upgrade and release plans for our core health systems (e.g. Acute and Community PAS, Datix etc) with dotted reporting lines to other tech teams in the ‘ologies

We have a team in the CDIO portfolio that already look after configuration, acceptance into service, release and upgrade management and training on core systems, but we also have pockets of IT across the Trust in Pathology, Radiology, Cardiology, Ophthalmology and any other ology’s you care to mention!

This role will need to build excellent relationships with the tech folk of Pathology, Radiology, Cardiology (all ologies!) and Medical Engineering to build the safe Digital hospital of the future.

Its first and foremost a management role, helping the existing teams be even better, but it also needs to balance ‘BAU’ with the amount of change we’re facing in the coming years.

It will look to build communities of practice across the Trust, and ensure all Health Tech is safe, reduce single points of failure by sharing knowledge, and ensure all tech adheres to DTAC including working with Clinical Safety Officers.

The background for people applying for this role could be very wide and varied! You might be a radiologist or a pathologist going into broader management, you might already be a specialist in PACS/Path/Rad who wants to contribute on a wider basis, or you could be an existing Health Tech manager who wants a fresh challenge.

Of all the roles this will most likely attract existing NHS colleagues — but you will also be a part of the Digital senior leadership team so we’d want you to understand Agile practises and contribute to our roadmap planning, prioritisation and release plan discussions (training will be provided!).

Apply at https://www.healthjobsuk.com/job/v5009056 before the closing date of 28th February 2023

Lead Delivery Manager — Grade 8B — £56,164 to £65,262

Thinking of your career choices this weekend? In NHSE/D as a Lead Delivery Manager and contemplating your future? Agency side and want to make a real difference?

Well, throw your hat in the ring to be a Lead Delivery Manager in an Acute and Community Trust…

As mentioned above we’re building an Agile delivery function — heck there may be aspects of waterfall or even hybrid (what is that????) but there’s some tenets for me that are universal, these are

• Estimation
• Prioritisation
• Release Plans
• Retrospectives

And having a clear backlog, in our case managed in Monday.com. This role will also look after our PMO — because there’s all the usual stuff of financial management, risk management, reporting/governance etc but we want ‘minimum viable bureaucracy’. I’ve also put stuff in the JD as below

• Help build a culture of success, creating the environment for happy, motivated and high performing teams
• Promote equality, diversity, positive speech & empathetic listening
• Grow care of the team as much as delivery of products
• Promote user needs (but be resilient when realities such as finance intervene)

And

• Deliver effective and engaging demand management meetings using scrum principles (planning sprints, sprint reviews & retrospectives,
• Introduce Agile project management and Product lifecycle thinking
• Create project-based processes to ensure excellent financial management “to time and budget”
• Work with Procurement to proactively manage existing and future contracts
• Support the AD of Digital Transformation in the management of an agile-based modern, flexible and creative Demand Management and Project Management Office (PMO) function,
• Proselytize methods — whether that be Agile, Hybrid (or less likely) Waterfall
• Manage the backlog and support prioritisation methods
• Shape the future roadmap and release plans
• Unblock blockers by creative approaches
• Support the development of business cases and programme artefacts working to principles of Minimum Viable Bureaucracy.

Which talks a lot to the cultural changes I’m looking to embed

And if you want to know some of my philosophy see ‘A tale of two Roman Pichler classes and a bit of what I’ve learnt from my Product tribe’

And a note on the grading — I’ve deliberately targeted 8B as

• It matches agency roles
• I might want to attract people earlier in their career
• Including people agency side who want a more meaningful job 😉
• But also the people who may have done great work in NHSD but want to get real
• And because I/we want new thinking

Apply at https://beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9434-23-6707 before the closing date of 24th February 2023

Project Manager — Grade 7 — £41,659 to £47,672

A project manager in the NHS is different — yes you help us to get from Point A to Point B but that journey is particularly rocky in health. From identifying the user need to articulating the business case (including costs and benefits) to getting the clinical buy in, and understanding clinical concepts and the awfulness of legacy tech overlaid with new. And then coming up with rational plans with critical paths and Project Boards and governance reporting and escalation and so on. It’s exhausting!

The biggest part is also probably relationship management — with external suppliers, internal Technology partners, 3rd part Tech sub contractors and stretched clinical teams

So why apply to BHT? Because we’re a bunch of great people, we’re on a massive journey where you’ll learn loads — and you’ll make a real difference to patients, their families and staff.

And whilst we’re advertising this at a Grade 7, we would explore making an appointment at Grade 6 with an Apprenticeship that would help grow to a 7.

Apply at https://beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9434-23-0887 before the closing date of 23rd February 2023

And more generally…

In June last year I wrote why you should join the NHS if you’re not yet with us — https://ianroddis.medium.com/why-come-to-buckinghamshire-and-do-digital-stuff-in-an-acute-hospital-93249520bd4c — I particularly want to bring new skills (Agile) and fresh ideas to the NHS

It’s ok if you don’t 100% match the essential criteria, we might have got it wrong and when we see your application we’ll see the other brilliant stuff you’ve done

Under represented groups particularly welcome. And If you want to explore apprenticeships or flexible working patterns get in touch with me. DM in twitter or LinkedIn prob better than email.

Ps — I hope soon we’ll be advertising a senior CNIO role! The journey continues…