Welcome from Tracey Fletcher, Chief Executive
Thank you for your interest in this important post.
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (EKHUFT) is seeking a Chief Operating Officer to join our team who is passionate about patient care and ambitious for our Trust and its staff.
Our values drive everything we do; we are striving to ensure that People feel cared for as individuals, People feel safe, reassured and involved, People feel teamwork, trust and respect sit at the heart of everything we do, People feel confident we are making a difference.
As one of the largest hospital trusts in England, with five hospitals and community clinics, we serve a local population of around 730,000 people and provide specialist services for a far wider population. Whilst we have challenges within some of our services, our reputation for delivering high quality specialist care in services such as urology, kidney disease, and vascular services, as well as for our research and innovation, is both national and international.
Development of new facilities including the hyper acute stroke unit at William Harvey, and new builds to add capacity to our emergency department will further our ability to respond to the needs of our growing local population, whilst ensuring we are well placed to contribute across the wider transformation of health and social care provision at a system level. Our pioneering Coastal and Remote strategy developed with the Nuffield Trust will help us to ensure we’re providing the best services to some of our hard-to-reach communities.
Certainly, we have made huge progress, however there is also much to do in working through challenges from issues around emergency pathway management, access and the backlog of people waiting. As a Trust we do not underestimate these challenges, but we do so with ambition and a commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of the communities we serve and the experiences of staff and patients alike.
As part of this we are seeking to appoint a Chief Operating Officer who will inspire and lead our operational teams to deliver safe, effective and high quality services to those who access them. They will work with our staff, stakeholders and Board to shape and drive our improvement and transformation programmes alongside strengthening internal governance arrangements.
We are seeking an exceptional individual with a depth of leadership experience and a track record of working through others and across organisational boundaries to achieve results at pace. With experience of leading service transformation within comparably complex acute environments, you will bring strategic perspective and sound judgement, complemented by resilience, tenacity and a collegiate approach to driving change. Our future must be shaped around our people and supported by inclusive leadership and robust governance. It is imperative that we seek out those leaders who embody our values and commit wholeheartedly to supporting our staff to achieve our priorities.
Kent has more sunny days than anywhere else in Britain, with some of the most beautiful rural and coastal countryside along with vibrant cities like including historic Canterbury, only just over an hour into central London and easy access to Europe. Our people work hard but we recognise the importance of life outside work, we offer vibrant careers and encourage a healthy work life balance.
This is an incredibly rewarding role. If you have the skills, experience and ambition to really make a difference, then please do consider joining us.
I look forward to meeting you during the process,
With best wishes,
Tracey Fletcher, Chief Executive