Patient Advice & Liaison Service (Pals) Team Leader

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust is seeking an enthusiastic individual to join its patient advice and liaison service as the senior PALS officer. This is a varied, interesting and challenging role that requires excellent problem solving, communication and leadership skills. The patient advice and liaison service provide patients and other members of the public with a point of contact for concerns, requests for information and queries. The service is busy and diverse and the role will involve running a small team of PALS officers to deal with members of the public who may be distressed on a regular basis in order to help resolve issues. You will have the ability to run a team including team management and administration as well as a positive attitude, excellent communication and networking skills and an empathic approach. You will have skills in developing solid working relationships with staff across the trust in order to resolve issues in a timely fashion. In return you will enjoy an interesting and rewarding role improving the patient experience by helping and advocating for patients, carers and visitors to the hospital, often when they need it most. For further information, please see the attached trust job description and person specification for a full list of duties and responsibilities. We provide emergency and non-emergency services to the residents of East Surrey, North-East West Sussex, and South Croydon, including the major towns of Crawley, Horsham, Reigate and Redhill; a community of over 535,000 people. We provide acute and complex services and a range of outpatient, diagnostic services whilst Crawley Hospital and Horsham in West Sussex and Caterham Dene Hospital and Oxted Health Centre in Surrey provide less complex planned services. In 2019 the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated our services as ‘Outstanding’ and we are one of the best performing Trusts in England: - Winners of Health Service Journal Acute Trust of the year award 2021 - National Patient Safety Awards winner and strive to be a beacon for safety in all that we do - We are in the top 20% nationally for staff recommending the Trust as a place to work or receive treatment - Our staff rate us the best in the country among comparable acute trusts when asked if they would recommend the Trust as a place to work and when asked whether care of patients is the organisation’s top priority - Our workforce are amongst the most motivated in the country; we achieved the top acute hospital score in the country for staff engagement in the last national staff survey