Job Description
Lead Nurse – Clinical and Professional Development
Job Summary
As Lead Nurse – Clinical and Professional Development, you will provide national leadership for clinical education and workforce development across Blood Donation. You will lead the quality and assurance of education and training for Registered Nurses and Donor Carers, helping colleagues deliver safe, evidence-based care. You will shape clinical education and workforce development, translate professional and regulatory requirements into effective learning, and use data, feedback and learning from incidents to continually improve programmes. You will also provide professional nursing leadership, support delivery of the NHSBT Nursing Strategy and lead key areas including professional development, revalidation, inclusion and staff-feedback action planning. This is an influential national role with the opportunity to strengthen workforce capability and make a direct contribution to clinical quality and donor safety.
Main duties of the job
You will:
- Provide national leadership for the design, development and quality assurance of clinical education across Blood Donation.
- Lead and develop the Education & Training Hub team, including recruitment, supervision, appraisal and talent development.
- Co-design and implement clinical education and workforce development strategy, ensuring programmes are effective, evidence based and continually improved.
- Provide specialist professional nursing leadership in areas including revalidation, practice development, competency assessment and professional investigations.
- Translate regulatory, professional and clinical requirements into safe, compliant and high-quality education and training.
- Monitor clinical and training data, KPIs, feedback, incidents and risks to identify improvements and provide assurance.
- Build effective partnerships with senior leaders, universities, regulators and other external organisations, representing clinical education at relevant forums.
- Lead or contribute to audit, research, evaluation and innovation to improve education and professional practice.
- Manage delegated budgets, contribute to cost improvement and support the development and procurement of digital learning solutions.
- Support delivery of the NHSBT Nursing Strategy across Blood Supply and lead key workforce initiatives including Our Voice and EDI action planning
About You
Experience and Knowledge
You will bring:
- Significant senior nursing experience in complex clinical environments, with highly developed specialist clinical knowledge relevant to Blood Donation.
- Extensive experience of designing, delivering and evaluating clinical education, together with experience of leading teams across multiple sites.
- Strong leadership, performance management, planning and organisational skills, with the ability to coach, mentor and motivate others.
- Strong analytical and judgement skills, including experience of interpreting complex clinical and workforce data and using insight to drive improvement.
- Excellent communication, influencing and facilitation skills, with experience of working with senior leaders, multi-professional teams and external organisations and translating national policy into operational practice.
Qualifications and Training
- Registered Nurse (Adult/Child) with current NMC registration.
- Postgraduate qualification at Master’s level or equivalent senior experience.
- Teaching, education or practice development qualification.
- Evidence of ongoing professional development.
The role also requires the ability to travel nationally and a willingness to maintain clinical competence for Blood Donation sessions.
About Us
It takes all types of people to deliver the kind of service that saves and improves lives. At NHS Blood and Transplant, you’ll join a team of more than 6,000 people who are making a genuine difference to communities, families, friends, relatives and more across the UK. We play a unique and special role in the NHS by helping people do something extraordinary- donate blood, blood products, organs, tissues, or stem cells to save someone in need.
Our three core values are what set us apart. They guide and inspire everything we do.
By being caring, expertly meeting the needs of our patients and our people, and accepting nothing less than the best quality, we can do extraordinary work – and help our people to do something extraordinary in their career, too. Three small words, one big difference - Caring, Expert and Quality. Together we'll save and improve more lives than ever.
You will join us on our journey to create an inclusive workplace and aim to reflect the diverse communities we work with, and we positively encourage applications from all sectors of the community.
What we offer:
- Hybrid working arrangements – because NHSBT works nationally, we’re able to offer hybrid working options that give you more flexibility to balance work with life.
- Flexible working options – we promote flexible working where the role allows. We’re happy to discuss what flexibility might look like for you.
- Generous annual leave - 27 days annual leave (pro rata for part-time) plus Bank Holidays, increasing to 29 days after 5 years’ service and to 33 days after 10 years.
- Inclusive pension scheme - the NHS Pension Scheme is a defined benefit scheme (not dependent on investment returns). Further details and outline of benefits can be found at: http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/information-about-nhs-pensions
- Supportive learning culture - we’ve fostered a culture of continuous learning where colleagues are well-led, engaged, and encouraged to grow. We support you in reaching your full potential, both in your current role and future career. Our Thrive program embodies our commitment to learning and development, offering a wide range of activities to support your personal and professional growth. It’s open to everyone at NHSBT, ensuring you have the resources to succeed and shine in your role.
- Health and wellbeing support – we offer confidential services including occupational health, employee assistance programme, and wellbeing resources. Our support is available to all colleagues and we endeavour to provide tailored workplace adjustments where possible.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we welcome applications from disabled candidates. We will talk with you to explore any adjustments that may help you during the recruitment process.
You can find more information about accessibility, our culture, and how we support applicants on the NHSBT Careers website:
To learn more, please see the job description and person specification. These can be accessed via the link below, or by clicking ‘Apply’ if you are viewing this advert on another site.
Next steps
This vacancy will close at 23:59pm on 1st November 2026
The assessment process for this role will include: a single interview
Interviews are anticipated to be held 11th November 2026 – subject to confirmation.
For informal enquiries please contact –
Name: Anthea Thorpe
Job Title: Head of Clinical Support Service - Clinical Support Team
Contact Details: Email – anthea.thorpe@nhsbt.nhs.uk
