Operational Manager

[megrob]

Can anyone tell me what the role of a operational manager b6 nhs entails? responsibilities/duties?
challenges?
what skills are required?
what will you be expected to do?

a internal vacancy has come up withing a Trust and im teying to gather background before considering?

Running the day to day activities, setting up processes and managing a small team. Measuring outputs and trouble shooting.

it depends on the area, but that covers most of all b6 operational management other than regular dipping down to cover when the team has capacity issues.

@TeenLifeMum what sort of outputs and troubleshooting

Following with interest to see if my suspicions about layers of management doing sfa in the NHS is correct. First response so far has nailed it.

Spot on with this. Too many managers in NHS doing SFA.

OP - look at Job description and person specification - it should tell you what the job entails and what type of person is needed. If it’s internal post they probably got someone for the job.Its not always about what you know but who you know! Ka-ching!!!

A couple of unfair responses re SFA.
band 6 operational managers are usually run ragged. It varies from trust to trust and team to team but usually I’d expect b6 to:

• mange the demand and capacity for clinics
• ensure clinics are fully utilised, and if not investigate why and put actions in to prevent happening/make up the lost activity
• manage waiting lists for OPD/IPWL validating them to make sure patients are moving through the system efficiently, chasing up outstanding actions/referrals/unblocking delays.
• responsibly for reporting on and achieving nationally mandated KPIs that are reported internally and externally including performance against plan, RTT performance for the new standards, cancer targets if relevant for service, DNA rates, cancellation rates, and working with the clinical, management and operational teams to come up with plans to achieve the targets and monitor progress on that.
• respond to formal and informal complaints
• manage the rota ensuring dr cover is safe and appropriate, support rota coordinator when finding solutions to gaps in advance or on the day to prevent cancellations of clinical activity
• ensure activity is cancelled for doctor or nurse leave for OPD.
• join and participate in bed meetings and assist with unblocking flow (arranging expedited tests for in patients to ensure their stay isn’t unnecessarily elongated
• often manage a team/team leader over out patient booking or admission teams or secretariats (varies trust to trust and team to team) and all that goes with staff management: sickness management, PDR, 121, ensuring all mandatory training is compliant, recruitment
• if managing a surgical specialty ensuring that the admissions team have utilised every minute of theatre available, liaise with theatres, bed management team, preop and anaesthetics to ensure efficiency and theatre is maximised
• validating and micro managing long wait patients

the job requires the post holder to be able to multitask and respond to issues on the day with solutions quickly, use their initiative, understand patient pathways and RTT rules, work well with clinicians and the wider MDT team, good use of excel, knowledge of the PAS systems etc, work in a face paced and pressured environment.

as someone above says, scour the JD, but I’d highly reccomend speaking to the recruiting manager/team for an informal chat about the job and day to day duties, and even shadow if you can.

it’s a tough but interesting job (not as tough as the front line staff have it from a patient facing POV) but in terms of admin and management jobs anything operational is way more stressful and pressured than say band 6 jobs in other admin/corporate functions. An excellent operational manager who’s keen to get involved, good attention to details, responsive and uses their initiative can have massive impact on the performance of a service.

good luck and enjoy

@Catsonskis has it spot on. I did the job for several years and although I loved it in many ways I eventually burnt out due to the horrendous workload and expectation of constant unpaid overtime. This is not the level of management that is bloated in the NHS, it's an extremely busy hands on role.

Having said that, not all specialities are equal. I worked in a very demanding area and knew others in the same role in different departments who definitely did not have my workload and also had a much smaller team to manage. I had 20-25 staff and just the admin associated with that side of it was extremely time consuming

Seriously? Band 6s are the toughest because they have to do the doing while balancing managing people and making sure everything runs smoothly. They are at a level where they are supposed to sort the day to day shit out (and there’s a lot of that).

If you have a strong team with no sickness or personal issues, inherit great processes then it’s far easier but I’ve not seen that often. I’m more senior but we don’t have a 6 in my team. It would be an unnecessary later in my area but in other areas they’re the ones that keep things going as managers and doers pulled in every direction.

what skills would you say are essential for ops managers and whats the biggest challenge?