Director of Nursing – Community Provider (Dublin)
Reports to:
Managing Director
Location:
Dublin (multi-site across community settings)
Contract:
Full-time, permanent
Service type:
Community services (e.g., residential disability, designated centres for older people, and/or home support).
Purpose of the role
Provide strategic and operational clinical leadership to ensure safe, person‑centred services that meet regulatory requirements and deliver measurable quality outcomes. The Director of Nursing (DoN) leads clinical governance, supervises/mentors Persons in Charge (PICs) and clinical teams, and drives continuous improvement across all centres/services.
Key responsibilities
1) Clinical governance & quality
* Lead the organisation's clinical governance framework, ensuring clear lines of accountability and decision-making.
* Establish and chair clinical governance meetings with fixed metrics, actions, and learning loops.
* Develop and oversee the annual clinical audit plan; ensure corrective actions are closed on time.
* Monitor restrictive practices and champion alternatives; approve/oversee any proposed restrictive interventions.
2) Safeguarding (Adults and Children, where applicable)
* Ensure robust safeguarding policies, risk screening, reporting, and case management pathways are in place and exercised.
* Act as senior escalation point for concerns, allegations, or notifiable events and ensure timely notifications to relevant authorities.
* Maintain training compliance in adult safeguarding and Children First (where services to under‑18s apply).
3) Medication management
* Own medicines management policies; ensure safe prescribing, administration, storage, reconciliation, and disposal.
* Implement competency-based training and assessment; monitor error trends and drive reduction plans.
* Maintain effective liaison with community pharmacists, prescribers, and acute services to optimise resident/service‑user outcomes.
4) Risk & incident management
* Lead incident triage and review, including serious incidents, root cause analysis, and open disclosure.
* Track incident actions to closure and demonstrate service change from learning.
* Maintain a live clinical risk register aligned to organisational risk appetite.
5) Regulatory readiness and compliance
* Ensure compliance with applicable Irish legislation, standards, and codes (e.g., Health Act 2007 regulations for designated centres; HIQA National Standards; NMBI Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics; HSE incident/open disclosure frameworks).
* Oversee Statements of Purpose, designated-centre governance arrangements, and appropriate PIC/PPIM cover.
* Lead preparation for announced and unannounced inspections; coordinate timely completion of action plans.
6) Leadership, people & culture
* Provide professional supervision and line management to PICs/clinical managers; ensure effective delegation and cover.
* Build and sustain a high‑performing, values‑driven nursing workforce with safe skill mix and rostering.
* Conduct workforce planning, recruitment, retention, and succession planning with HR.
* Ensure all nursing and care staff receive induction, supervision, and CPD mapped to service needs.
7) Service development & external relationships
* Partner with service‑user/family forums to embed co‑production and feedback.
* Build relationships with HSE, HIQA, CHO areas, primary care, acute hospitals, advocacy groups, and community partners.
* Evaluate new models of care and support commissioning, tenders, and service expansion as required.
8) Information, data & KPIs
* Define and track core quality indicators (e.g., incidents per 1,000 care days, medication errors per 1,000 administrations, safeguarding response times, training compliance, inspection actions closed on time, workforce vacancy/agency rates).
* Produce monthly and quarterly quality reports for the executive/board, highlighting risks, trends, and improvement plans.
9) Education & professional standards
* Uphold NMBI professional standards; ensure scope of practice is understood and adhered to across teams.
* Sponsor targeted training (e.g., positive behavioural support, dementia care, intellectual disability, palliative care, clinical risk).