CCLHD - Operational Nurse Manager (ONM) Grade 5

Employment Type: Temporary Full Time
Position Classification: Nurse Manager Grade 5
Remuneration: $3062.49 - $3114.40 per week
Hours Per Week: 38
Requisition ID: REQ652501

You've built clinical teams. Now build something bigger.

You know what good looks like. You've led shift by shift, ward by ward, and you've earned every bit of credibility you carry. But you're ready for something that stretches you: a role where your decisions shape services, your voice carries weight at the executive table, and your leadership leaves a mark long after you've moved on.

Central Coast Local Health District is looking for an Operational Nurse Manager to lead Critical Care at Gosford Hospital. This is a senior operational leadership role with a $55 million budget, oversight of multiple critical care units, and direct influence on how nursing is practised, developed and valued across the service.

Our strategic vision is simple and ambitious: Trusted Care. Better health for everyone.

If you're the kind of leader who's energised (not exhausted) by complexity, read on.

What this role looks like

This isn't a title upgrade. It's a fundamentally different kind of leadership.

• You'll lead leaders: Your team includes Nursing Unit Managers across critical care. Your job is to coach, stretch and back them, not to micromanage rosters. You set the tone, the standard and the direction.

• You'll own the operations: Resource allocation, budget stewardship, patient flow, service planning. You'll make the calls that keep critical care running safely and efficiently, and you'll use data to make them well.

• You'll have a seat at the table: Working alongside Directors of Nursing, medical leads and executive stakeholders, you'll shape strategy, not just execute it. Workforce planning, model of care design, quality improvement: this is where your thinking matters most.

• You'll champion nursing: Loudly, consistently, and with evidence. You'll advocate for the profession, invest in your people's development, and create the kind of culture that retains good nurses and grows future leaders.

• You'll drive change that sticks: Not change for change's sake. Meaningful, measurable improvement in how care is delivered, how teams function, and how patients experience our service.

Who thrives in this role

You don't need to tick every box. But the leaders who do well here tend to share a few things:

• They've led at scale and understand the difference between managing a unit and leading a service.

• They're genuinely collaborative: comfortable in multidisciplinary spaces, skilled at navigating competing priorities, and able to bring people with them.

• They back themselves with data. KPIs, workforce metrics, patient outcomes: they know how to read the story the numbers are telling and act on it.

• They care deeply about nursing as a profession, not just a function, and they invest in the people around them accordingly.

• They've been through enough change to know that how you lead through it matters as much as what you implement.

This recruitment may be used to establish an eligibility list for permanent, full-time, part-time, temporary and casual positions.

Our team is stronger when it reflects the community we serve.

We genuinely welcome applications from women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people with disability, LGBTIQ+ community members, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Different perspectives don't just belong here, they make us better at what we do.

What you get (beyond the work that matters)

• An Accrued Day Off (ADO) each month for full-time employees, because sustainable careers need breathing room

• Full salary packaging services that genuinely stretch your take-home pay further

• Discounted Fitness Passport to support your health outside of work

• A confidential Employee Assistance Program that not only offers support but career coaching and difficult conversation navigation

• Real professional development, guided by leaders who've built careers in health and know how to grow others

• The scale, complexity and reach of the Central Coast's largest employer, which means your work here carries weight, and your career has room to move

Child Safe Standards: CCLHD is committed to child safety across every service, ward, emergency department, waiting room, clinic and virtual space. The Child Safe Standards guide our approach to preventing, responding to and reporting abuse, and to amplifying the voices of children and young people in our community. Child safety is everyone's responsibility.

If you identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and would like support with your application, visit our Stepping Up Initiative  (https://www.steppingup.health.nsw.gov.au/Pages/Home.aspx), a resource designed to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants navigate the NSW Health recruitment process.

  1) Click here for the Position Description 
  2) Find out more about applying for this position

For role-related queries, contact:

Michael Swab
Phone: 02 4320 2420
Email: Michael.Swab@health.nsw.gov.au

**Applications Close:** Tuesday, 28 April 2026 at 11:59pm