We’re not looking for someone who’s already running a Director of Nursing office in a large hospital and wants to keep doing exactly that, somewhere else. We’re looking for someone else who is ready for growth. You might be a Clinical Nurse Consultant, a Nurse Unit Manager, or a Nurse Educator with genuine clinical leadership experience behind you. What matters more than the title is what you’re looking for next: the chance to be part of something that genuinely changes people’s lives.
The Banyans is a premium mental health and addiction treatment service, caring for professionals and high-profile individuals who need somewhere they can be treated with absolute discretion. We operate 15 beds across two residential sites in a rural, nature-based setting outside Brisbane, set among stunning natural surroundings, plus a day program at our inner-city clinic. Confidentiality isn’t a policy here, it’s a condition of trust our guests need to feel from the moment they arrive, and it has to run through everyone on the team.
Our model is genuinely multidisciplinary: medical, psychiatry, nursing, psychology, exercise physiology, and clinical nutrition working in daily clinical contact with each other, not a nursing department that occasionally gets looped in on a case conference. We call the people in our care guests, not patients, because the model is one-to-one and wraparound: every person gets a team built around them, not a slot in a roster. Our values, care, respect, and joy, aren’t printed on a poster. They shape how the whole team, including nursing, works day to day.
What the role involves:
- Leading a team of Registered Nurses day to day, and taking direct responsibility for the professional development of our Enrolled Nurses
- Getting onto the floor yourself and providing hands-on nursing care when the team needs you there. This isn’t a role where you disappear into an office
- Ownership of clinical governance, incident review, and quality improvement
- Leading our NSQHS accreditation cycle from the ground up: policy, audit, evidence, and the actual work of getting a service survey-ready
- Building rosters, skill mix, and clinical standards for a service that’s still growing
- Being part of our Manager on Call roster, sharing after-hours accountability with the Clinical Director and Operations Manager rather than carrying it alone
- Working alongside our Medical Director, Clinical Director, Operations Manager, and Managing Director, with a genuine seat at that table rather than a line item in someone else’s report
Intake is a real part of this job, not an admin add-on:
- Speaking directly with prospective guests and their families, often at the point they’re at their most vulnerable and the decision to come in is finely balanced
- Supporting the clinical assessment that determines whether someone is right for our program and what their care will need to look like from day one, working with our Nurse Practitioner and Medical Director
- Moving quickly and calmly when someone is ready to commit, because in this work, the gap between “I’ve decided to get help” and someone changing their mind can be a matter of hours
- Holding the same discretion and judgement at intake that you’ll hold throughout their stay, particularly given the profile of many of the people we care for
What we’re offering that you won’t find in a hospital DON ad:
- Structured mentoring from an experienced Director of Nursing who now sits in a clinical governance role
- A real say in how the service is run, not a title with no authority behind it
- The chance to build your accreditation and governance experience from scratch, which is exactly the experience that gets you taken seriously for a substantive DON role later
- A patient-centred, values-led environment where you’re not managing a roster of nurses across many wards: you’re leading a team you know
- Subsidised chef-made meals available on site, every day
What you’ll
need:
Essential
- Current AHPRA registration as a Registered Nurse
- Solid clinical leadership experience, whether as a CNC, NUM, Nurse Educator, or in an equivalent senior clinical role
- Experience with mental health and/or addiction treatment
- Absolute discretion and the judgement to protect our guests’ privacy without exception. This is non-negotiable given who we care for.
- An innovative, possibility-driven mindset. We want someone who looks at how things are done and asks whether there’s a better way, rather than defaulting to how it’s always been done
- The judgement and presence to lead a team, and the humility to know you’re still building toward the top job
Desirable
- Experience in a private, patient-centred healthcare setting
- Interest in learning more about psychedelic-assisted therapy and advanced therapeutics — you don’t need to be an expert, but curiosity about where this field is heading matters to us
- Experience in service design and the launch of new services, given we’re still growing
- Comfort using guest feedback as a genuine driver of clinical and service improvement, not just something collected and filed
- Confidence with technology and digital systems, since we lean on them for clinical documentation, reporting, and day-to-day operations
- Some exposure to clinical governance, quality, or accreditation processes (NSQHS experience a strong plus)
How to apply:
To apply, please submit your up to date resume and a cover letter (no more than 1 page in length) telling us about your interest in the role and why we might be a fit for you.
The Banyans respects and honours Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on this land and commit to building a brighter future together.
