About this role
Job summary
The Maternity Operational Manager plays a pivotal role in delivering high-quality, safe, and responsive maternity services. Working closely with the Senior Leadership Team, the post holder provides strong clinical and operational midwifery leadership to ensure the smooth and effective running of the maternity unit across weekdays, nights, weekends, and Bank Holidays.
Maintaining a highly visible and accessible presence, the post holder acts as a senior point of contact for patients, families, and staff, offering expert guidance, reassurance, and support. They are instrumental in fostering a culture of excellence, ensuring both fundamental and specialist care needs are consistently met.
Accountable for the management and performance of the service, the Maternity Operational Manager oversees staff coordination and deployment, proactively responding to service demands across the maternity setting. This includes leading workforce planning, making real-time decisions on staff redeployment, and ensuring resources are optimally aligned to maintain safe, effective care delivery.
The role also carries responsibility for upholding the quality and standard of both clinical and non-clinical services within their span of control, driving continuous improvement and ensuring care is delivered in line with best practice and organisational priorities.
Main duties of the job
Gaining an in-depth understanding of the process's supporting flow through maternity and Gynaecology to ensure appropriate placement of patients according to their clinical need and ensure best placement of birth and minimise service closure.
Recognising the trigger factors associated with the Maternity and Trust Escalation policy in order to minimise bed crisis through effective planning and how to implement the strategy when necessary.
Gaining an understanding, and liaising with our Main Trust Operations centre and regularly attending Site Safety meetings to report staffing levels and quality issues.
Recognising the need to escalation admission, discharge, safeguarding and patient flow issues, to the Midwifery Manager of on call or relevant specialist teams and becoming aware of the strategies that can be employed to address critical bed states/maximise staffing.
Implementing the communication with our sister site at Luton & Dunstable, along with other Trusts & Health Care providers in the area regarding capacity to support when the Maternity unit is in escalation and when necessary co-ordinating the transfer of patients to other hospitals.
Support data collection from Red Flag reporting, staff redeployments, emergency calls (working to aid improvement work to optimise safety and provide analytics to facilitate best redeployment for staff.
Participate in roster writing to ensure appropriate skill mix of staff across inpatient areas of maternity
About us
Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides hospital services to a growing population of around 700,000 people living across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas across two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Both hospital sites offer key services such as A&E, Obstetrics-led Maternity and Paediatrics. You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology available.
Our values
We not only recruit based on qualifications and experience - we recruit individuals who demonstrate the behaviours which underpin our Trusts core values. We achieve this by using values based recruitment. We are dedicated to making our recruitment practices as inclusive as possible for everyone, we are committed to promoting equality and diversity, and creating a culture that values differences.
Please note that vacancies may close prior to the advertised closing date when sufficient number of applications have been received. All new staff will be subject to a probationary period covering first 6 months in post. Travel between hospital sites may be required. Please review all documents attached to ensure you familiarize yourself with all requirements of the job
Job description Job responsibilities
Please refer to the job description and personal specification for further details of roles and responsibilities
Person Specification
Qualifications Essential
Registered Midwife Evidence of Degree or masters qualification
Desirable
Research qualification
Experience Essential
Suitable Post-Registration experience within relevant speciality at band 6 or above In depth knowledge of inpatient pathways Evidence of the application of management/leadership skills and autonomous practice Evidence of continued professional development
Desirable
Involvement in audit Participation in Research Participation in roster management
Knowledge Essential
Organisational and negotiation skills Effective communicator Leadership & motivation skills Evidence of audit and change management ability
Personal Skills Essential
Effective communicator both written and verbal Ability to take managerial and professional responsibility for team and staff. Ability to think logically, prioritise and use initiative Diplomatic Assertive and confident Reliable, Adaptable and Dependable
Disclosure and Barring Service Check This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Certificate of Sponsorship Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Employer details Employer name Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Address Luton & Dunstable Hospital
Lewsey Road
Luton
LU4 0DZ
United Kingdom
Employer's website https://www.bedfordshirehospitals.nhs.uk/working-here/ (Opens in a new tab)