JOB DESCRIPTION

1. General Information

JOB TITLE: Project Officer

AREA/SPECIALITY: Oncology

GRADE: Band 6

DEPARTMENT: Oncology

RESPONSIBLE TO: Programme Manager

ACCOUNTABLE TO: Oncology General Manager

About the Trust

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust comprises five of the UK’s best
known hospitals – Guy’s, St Thomas’, Evelina London Children’s Hospital,
Royal Brompton and Harefield – as well as community services in Lambeth
and Southwark, all with a long history of high quality care, clinical excellence,
research and innovation.

We are among the UK’s busiest, most successful foundation trusts. We

provide specialist care for patients including heart and lung, cancer and renal
services as well as a full range of local hospital and community services for
people in Lambeth and Southwark.

We have a long tradition of clinical and scientific achievement and – as part of

King’s Health Partners – we are one of England’s eight academic health
sciences centres, bringing together world-class clinical services, teaching and
research. We have one of the National Institute for Health Research’s
biomedical research centres, established with King’s College London in 2007,
as well as dedicated clinical research facilities.

We have around 22,700 staff, making us one of the largest NHS Trusts in the
country and one of the biggest employers locally. We aim to reflect the
diversity of the communities we serve and continue to develop new and
existing partnerships with local people, patients, neighbouring NHS
organisations, local authorities and charitable bodies and GPs.

We strive to recruit and retain the best staff as the dedication and skills of our
employees lie at the heart of our organisation and ensure that our services
are of the highest quality, safe and focused on our patients.

Department Information

Page 1 of 9
The Oncology Directorate consists of Clinical Oncology, Medical Oncology,
Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy. The directorate also comprises one inpatient
ward. Our challenge is managing increasing activity and complexity whilst
maintaining patient centred Care. In September 2016 the Oncology services
moved into the Guy’s Cancer Centre on the Guy’s Hospital campus and then in
May 2017 Guys Cancer at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup opened offering care
closer to home to our patients.
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust (GSTT) is the specialist cancer centre for all of
South East London and further afield, treating an ethnically diverse patient
population of over 2 million across a wide range of socio-economic groups.
Our vision is to be a world leader in caring for people with cancer – continuously
innovating to improve the lives of our patients by treating more patients whilst
giving better care by improving their day to day experience as well as providing
better training and research.
Organisational Values:
Our values help us to define and develop our culture, what we do and how
we do it. It is important that you understand and reflect these values
throughout your employment with the Trust.
The post holder will:
a. Put patients first
b. Take pride in what they do
c. Respect others
d. Strive to be the best
e. Act with integrity
Our values and behaviours framework describes what it means for every one
of us in the Trust to put our values into action. The framework can be found
on our Trust careers pages and GTIntranet.

2. Job Summary

The post-holder is responsible for providing individual packages of work and

service support to ensure project outputs are delivered effectively.

The post holder will take a lead on specific projects or aspects of a project.
With responsibility for, day-to-day delivery and adjusting plans as required to
ensure that risks and issues are mitigated.

The post holder will work with clinicians and managers to ensure provision of
the best possible patient experience and service delivery.

The post holder will work collaboratively with internal and external
stakeholders to ensure effective management of interdependencies and
delivery of objectives.

It is expected that the specific projects managed by the post holder will
change over time as the portfolio of work changes.

Page 2 of 9
This is a generic job description. Additional specific responsibilities and
requirements depending on specialty will be confirmed during the appointment
and induction processes. The duties and responsibilities listed below are
representative of the role and its purpose within the service; they are not
exhaustive and the post holder may be required to undertake additional or
alternative administrative or managerial duties and responsibilities
commensurate with the level of the post.

3. Key Relationships

The post holder will have regular contact with a wide range of clinical and
managerial staff, administrative and clerical support staff at many levels and
occasionally with patients, relatives and external agencies.

As the NHS, we are reminded every day of how important life is. As a flexible
Working friendly organization, we want to be sure that you can work in a way
that is best for our patients, our staff and for you. Speak to us about how we
might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s
job share, part time or another flexible pattern. If it works for the service, we’ll
make it work for you.

4. Duties and Responsibilities

Project Management

 Support the development of project plans and the delivery of agreed

milestones and objectives.

 Provide project support to the individuals in the project team.

 Organise project meetings, ensuring that regular meetings are

established, reports are produced and disseminated in a timely way and
actions are followed up – adjusting plans to accommodate complex and
changing priorities.

 Set up and maintain risk and issues logs. Working closely with more
senior project leads to monitor and address risks and issue resolution to
ensure projects deliver to time, quality and cost.

 Lead service level workshops with admin, management and clinical

teams. Produce presentation material and follow up information to
introduce change projects and delivery plans.

 Communicate information on the delivery progress of the project(s) to key

stakeholders as required.

 Provide scheduled highlight and exception reports per project, tracking

milestones, for circulation to more senior project leads

Page 3 of 9
  Co-ordinate minutes, agendas and papers for distribution in preparation
for meetings, ensuring this is done in a timely manner.

 Support evaluation and audit of projects across sites and organisations.

Financial management

 Manage a delegated budget for own area of work to ensure best value for
money, including signing off invoices, monitoring expenditure and providing
budgetary reports.

 Actively monitor expenditure against budget and address problems at an

early stage.

 Support the commissioning and procurement of products, equipment,

services, systems and facilities, as required for the delivery of the project.

Staff and stakeholder management

 Support engagement plans for project to proactively ensure that positive

and effective relations are developed and maintained between members of
the team, all clients and key internal and external stakeholders throughout
the project.

 Support strategies to achieve acceptance, consensus and alignment of

views, both formally and informally from senior managers and clinicians.

 Support delivery plans and ensure these are regularly updated for all
projects.

 Support specific project management training and model practices to both

internal staff members and external stakeholders and partners.

Information management

 Maintain project information management systems, produce reports and

maintain project plans.

 Maintain data collection systems that will provide accurate and timely data,
including quantitative and qualitative data.

 Develop, maintain and document database systems and processes to enable

robust and transparent storage of raw and aggregated data.

 To provide assurance that any sensitive data is extracted and processed in

accordance with Information Governance principles.

Page 4 of 9
 Participate or lead special information projects ensuring they are aligned to the
key objectives of the service, providing options and recommendations to
support these objectives.

 To work with clinicians and service leads to undertake analysis of care delivery
processes and pathways, advising on how these might be changed or refined
to improve their efficiency, and how such changes would be enabled by the
appropriate use of information systems and communications technology.

 Interpret policies and protocols to support the project that are consistent
with Trust standards

Strategy, change and service improvement

 Support the development of a project strategy including research and

development to identify, develop and promote best practice.

 Support test and review of new concepts, models, methods, practices,

products and equipment.

 Support innovative methods to gain patient and public involvement to

inform service direction, improvement, user satisfaction and as a tool for
performance management.

 Regular horizon scanning of best practice and ways of working within the
sector and within project management.

Personal Development

 Maintain up to date knowledge of a range of skills including service

improvement techniques and be responsible for developing and
maintaining own CPD programme.

Research and Development

 To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects to

inform the project management team in the development of services provision
and redesign.

General

 Autonomy for specific areas of directorate, to assess the impact of change

and make decisions, balancing risks and priorities
 Provide advice to the GM/DMT.
 Proactive in identifying and addressing issues which are significant within
and across directorates.

Page 5 of 9
The following statement forms part of all job descriptions:

The post holder is required to follow Trust policies and procedures which are
regularly updated including:

Confidentiality / Data Protection / Freedom of Information

Post holders must maintain the confidentiality of information about patients,
staff and other health service business in accordance with the Data Protection
Act of 2018. Post holders must not, without prior permission, disclose any
information regarding patients or staff. If any member of staff has
communicated any such information to an unauthorised person those staff will
be liable to dismissal. Moreover, the Data Protection Act 2018 also renders an
individual liable for prosecution in the event of unauthorised disclosure of
information.

Following the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000, post holders must apply
the Trust’s FOI procedure if they receive a written request for information.

Information Governance
All staff must comply with information governance requirements. These
includes statutory responsibilities (such as compliance with the Data Protection
Act), following national guidance (such as the NHS Confidentiality Code of
Practice) and compliance with local policies and procedures (such as the
Trust's Confidentiality policy). Staff are responsible for any personal information
(belonging to staff or patients) that they access and must ensure it is stored,
processed and forwarded in a secure and appropriate manner.

Equal Opportunities
Post holders must at all times fulfil their responsibilities with regard to the Trust’s
Equal Opportunities Policy and equality laws.

Health and Safety

All post holders have a responsibility, under the Health and Safety at Work Act
(1974) and subsequently published regulations, to ensure that the Trust’s
health and safety policies and procedures are complied with to maintain a safe
working environment for patients, visitors and employees.

Infection Control
All post holders have a personal obligation to act to reduce healthcare-
associated infections (HCAIs). They must attend mandatory training in Infection
Control and be compliant with all measures required by the Trust to reduce
HCAIs. All post holders must comply with Trust infection screening and
immunisation policies as well as be familiar with the Trust’s Infection Control
Policies, including those that apply to their duties, such as Hand
Decontamination Policy, Personal Protective Equipment Policy, safe
procedures for using aseptic techniques and safe disposal of sharps.

Page 6 of 9
Risk Management
All post holders have a responsibility to report risks such as clinical and non-
clinical accidents or incidents promptly. They are expected to be familiar with
the Trust’s use of risk assessments to predict and control risk, as well as the
incident reporting system for learning from mistakes and near misses in order
to improve services. Post holders must also attend training identified by their
manager, or stated by the Trust to be mandatory.

Flexible Working
As an organisation we are committed to developing our services in ways that
best suit the needs of our patients. This means that some staff groups will
increasingly be asked to work a more flexible shift pattern so that we can offer
services in the evenings or at weekends.

Safeguarding children and vulnerable adults

Post holders have a general responsibility for safeguarding children and
vulnerable adults in the course of their daily duties and for ensuring that they
are aware of the specific duties relating to their role.

Sustainability
It is the responsibility of all staff to minimise the Trust’s environmental impact
by recycling wherever possible, switching off lights, computers monitors and
equipment when not in use, minimising water usage and reporting faults
promptly.

Smoking Policy
The Trust is committed to providing a healthy and safe environment for staff,
patients and visitors. Staff are therefore not permitted to smoke on Trust
property or in Trust vehicles

Review of this Job Description

This job description is intended as an outline of the general areas of activity and
will be amended in the light of the changing needs of the organisation. To be
reviewed in conjunction with the post holder.

Updated Dec 2023

Page 7 of 9
 PERSON SPECIFICATION
Project Officer (6)

ESSENTIAL A/I/T* DESIRABLE A/I/T*

Qualifications / Degree in computer science, statistics, A Prince 2 A/I
Education mathematics or other discipline with a qualification or
large numerical component – or equivalent equivalent
knowledge, skills and work experience experience

Evidence of recent Continuing Professional A/I Understanding of A/I

Development lean methodology
Previous Evidence of supporting successful project A/I Knowledge and A/I
experience and / or operational performance and understanding of
improvement; including the development the changing NHS
and monitoring of output and outcome environment
measures.

Substantial experience in information A/I

management and analysis.

Project experience in supporting specific A/I

services including design, development,
implementation and management of
change in a multi-professional
environment.
A/I
Experience of administering budgets and
demonstrable evidence of individual, team,
financial, process and change
management.
Skills / Effective people and project management A/I Familiar with NHS A/I
Knowledge / skills. Acute Trust
Ability business practice
Use analytical and judgement skills A/I/T and operating
including understanding and application of frameworks.
complex statistical and numerical data.
Familiarity with A/I
Able to retrieve and process data from a A/I/T NHS national
variety of systems, understand the data datasets.
structures within the systems and join
extracted data sets into uniform outputs Knowledge of NHS A/I
Good attention to detail and a systematic systems, data
approach to quality control with regards to capture processes,
data. outcomes and
Information
Effective communication skills both written A/I/T Governance
and verbal including formal presentation
skills, influencing and negotiating. Experience of A/I
linking large
Work flexibly and prioritise in response to A/I/T datasets
changing demands and requirements.

Organisational skills and the ability to A/I

Page 8 of 9
 prioritise, meet deadlines and delegate
effectively.

Capable of working independently A/I

towards agreed objectives Ability to find
innovative ways of solving or pre-empting
problems.
A/I
Knowledge and understanding of NHS
Data issues and related terminology
A/I
Utilises interpersonal skills to build and
maintain relationships with staff at all
levels
A/I/T
IT literate, including competency in MS
Office programmes and in particular in
Excel.
Additional  A commitment to partnership working, A/I
information inclusion of a diverse workforce and
service integration.

 Ability to carry out the physical

requirements of the post, with any
reasonable adjustment being made
under the Equalities Act 2010.

A=application
I=interview
T=Test/ assessment centre
It must be stated whether these requirements are ESSENTIAL or DESIRABLE for the post.
This can be clearly understood by the potential candidate if it is done in the form of a chart.

Page 9 of 9