Clinical Matron - Emergency Department

Job Overview

Clinical Matron, Emergency Department

Wexham Park Hospital

The Clinical Matron for the Emergency Department is a senior nursing leader responsible for delivering safe, effective, and high-quality patient care within a fast-paced, complex environment. The postholder will provide visible, compassionate leadership, acting as a professional role model and ensuring consistently high standards of clinical practice and patient experience.

Working within the ED leadership team, the Clinical Matron will support and develop multidisciplinary staff, promoting a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and patient-centred care. They will have operational oversight of the department, including patient flow, workforce deployment, and performance against key targets.

The role includes leading on quality, safety, and governance, ensuring compliance with national standards and regulatory requirements, including those of the Care Quality Commission. The postholder will contribute to service development, incident management, and clinical audit.

In addition, the Clinical Matron will lead workforce development, supporting education, wellbeing, and retention to maintain a skilled and resilient team.

Main duties of the job

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for nursing and clinical support staff in the ED.
• Ensure consistently high standards of patient safety, quality, and experience.
• Lead workforce planning, rostering, recruitment, and retention to maintain a resilient and skilled workforce.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, professional development, and accountability.
• Work collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams to support flow, performance targets (e.g., 4‑hour standard), and service transformation.
• Act as the professional lead for nursing governance, safeguarding, infection prevention, and regulatory compliance.

Working for our organisation

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust is committed to being an inclusive and disability confident employer and has been awarded the Gold for the Armed Forces Employment Recognition Scheme. We provide first class development opportunities for all staff and have a wide range of professional, management and leadership, and clinical skills training available.

Here at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, we know how important it is to have a healthy work life balance; this benefits not only individuals but the patients we care for too.

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service and its users.

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Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

For a full list of responsibilities and tasks associated with this role, please refer to the job description/person specification attached to this vacancy.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Educated to degree level or working towards
• NMC Registration
• Extensive post registration emergency qualifications

Desirable criteria

• Educated to master’s degree level

Experience

Essential criteria

• Significant experience at senior clinical/managerial level in emergency medicine
• Some NHS experience at a Band 7

Desirable criteria

• In-depth experience in a variety of hospital units
• Involvement in clinical audit and/or research

Skills & Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Understands the concepts of clinical governance and shared governance including evidence-based practice and critical appraisal of research findings
• Demonstrates knowledge of effective risk management
• Knowledge of current NHS issues including performance targets and the wider health economy
• Knowledge and experience of management models, implementing change and/or new clinical practices and current professional issues
• Understand principles of effective budgetary management and demonstrate experience of managing budgets

Special requirements

Essential criteria

• Flexible working hours including unsocial hours and bank holidays
• Able to travel between sites

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (FHFT) is proud of its strong reputation, record of achievement and ambition for the future. We serve a population of over 900,000 people across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and South Buckinghamshire, and remain committed to improving the health and wellbeing of our communities.

Our new organisational strategy – FHFT 2030 – sets out our ambition to be the best place to receive care and the best place to work in the NHS. Underpinned by our Trust values – Committed to Excellence, Working Together, Facing the Future, and being a modern, compassionate, Healthcare Organisation – we are creating a culture where our people can thrive and patients always come first.

We continue to invest heavily in our services and facilities. This includes the development of a new hospital at Frimley Park, major expansion of diagnostics and inpatient capacity, and the continued transformation of services across our sites. We have already delivered a brand-new £100m state-of-the-art Heatherwood Hospital, a £49m Emergency Assessment Centre at Wexham Park, and a £10m upgrade to maternity services.

We are also committed to sustainability and the NHS Net Zero ambition. Our new hospital and estate developments are being designed to be environmentally responsible, energy efficient, and future-proofed, featuring on-site renewables energy and intelligent energy systems. Through our green plan, we are embedding sustainable practices across all areas of care and operations, ensuring we reduce our environmental impact while improving population health and wellbeing. Our staff are key to helps us deliver on our ambition and to ensure sustainability is a core component of care delivery and our operations.

Alongside estates’ investments, we are embedding a strong focus on digital innovation and quality improvement. Our electronic patient record (Epic), launched in 2024, is already enabling safer, more connected, and more effective care for patients, while giving staff the tools they need to do their best work. Our electronic patient record also supports safe and effective digitised care pathways, savings time and carbon, whilst delivering excellent quality of care.

Everything we do is guided by our values, shaping how we care for patients, support colleagues, and build a sustainable future for healthcare together.

Apply online now