Clinical Nurse Specialist - Palliative Care

Job overview

We are recruiting for a Clinical Nurse Specialist - Palliative Care who shares our vision to be trusted to provide consistently outstanding care and exemplary service to our patients.

Join our Acute Hospital Specialist Palliative Care Team-enhance your assessment skills and provide a continuing supportive service within the Lister Hospital as part of the East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust.

You will participate in 7 day working, facilitate optimum health care to those diagnosed with cancer and other incurable long term health conditions and those requiring palliative & end of life care, supporting both family and friends.

At the heart of everything we do are our core values: Include, Respect, and Improve. We encourage you to embrace these values throughout the recruitment process and in your role with us.

Main duties of the job

To work with Macmillan teams and Clinical Nurse Specialists in East and North Hertfordshire. · Liaise with Garden House Hospice, Letchworth, Isabel Hospice, Welwyn and any other hospice teams. · Ward sisters · Consultants in Palliative Care · Consultants (Surgeons and Physicians) · Consultant Oncologists and Radiotherapists · The multi-disciplinary team.

The Primary Health Care Team Cancer Site Specific Clinical Nurse Specialists Macmillan Lecturer Practitioners in Palliative Care, Dementia Admiral Nurse, Frailty Clinical Nurse Specialist Lead Nurse.

Working for our organisation

At East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust, we are proud of the range of general and specialist services we provide and our 6,000 or so dedicated staff ensure our patients get the best care. Our ability to be flexible and innovative in the way in which we work and deliver our services to our catchment has never been more important than it is now.

We run the following hospitals:

• The Lister Hospital, Stevenage
• New Queen Elizabeth II (New QEII), Welwyn Garden City
• Hertford County, Hertford
• Mount Vernon Cancer Centre (MVCC), Northwood

We have ambitious plans to become an outstanding, patient-led Trust where dedicated staff provide high-quality, compassionate care to our patients. We continue to undergo significant transformation and our staff and patients are at the heart of delivering this ambitious agenda.

We are committed to a positive work life balance for our employees. This means that any employee is entitled to seek to work flexible working patterns and we are committed to listen and consider all requests. Such requests, of course, have to be made and considered formally, and will need to be balanced against service needs, but our starting point will always be to find ways to support making them happen.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification applicant pack for further detailed information regarding this role.

Person specification

Qualifications / Training

Essential criteria

• Registered nurse education to Degree level or willingness to undertake
• Post registration qualification in speciality
• Evidence of continuous professional development
• Teaching qualification
• Advanced communication skills/counselling qualification
• Advanced clinical assessment
• Management/leadership qualification or equivalent experience

Desirable criteria

• Research Module Masters Degree
• Non Medical Prescribing Qualification

Previous Experience

Essential criteria

• Significant relevant experience in the Specialty and ability to demonstrate expert nursing skills
• Accept personal accountability for own practice
• Experience of formal/informal teaching
• Experience of initiating change
• Delivering evidence-based practice
• Experience of Clinical Governance
• Understanding of patient pathways and it’s complexities and how to support patients through this
• Experience in ward management role at band 6/7

Skills

Essential criteria

• Good verbal and written communication skills
• Capable of working as an integral member of a small team
• Flexible and adaptable to changing situations due to workload and colleague’s needs
• Experience to undertake teaching of staff and patients
• Leadership skills
• Demonstrates ability to work unsupervised and manage own workload; effective time -management
• Effective interpersonal skills
• Demonstrates ability to lead developments in practice
• Shows commitment to multi-disciplinary working
• Demonstrate analytical and judgmental skills
• Ability to quickly appraise situation and act accordingly
• Advanced communication skills

Desirable criteria

• Psychological skills training

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Expert specialist clinical advice for patients, carers and health care professionals
• Expert clinical advice on prescribing/advising therapeutic medications to alleviate complex patient symptoms
• Working with the patient, family and ward team to support the patient’s Advanced Care Plan
• Give advice and guidance to the multidisciplinary team in completing a ReSPECT form (as appropriate)
• Understand personal needs to demonstrate boundaries to keep self and others psychologically safe

Desirable criteria

• Experience of completing ReSPECT forms with patients (as appropriate)

Other Requirements

Essential criteria

• Experience and evidence of engagement around the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda. Able to actively support the development of a culture that recognises and promotes equality, values diversity, and actively leads by example in deploying these qualities. Understands the impact on equality, diversity and inclusion issues in all aspects of service delivery and planning
• Role model our Trust values every day
• Demonstrates knowledge of showing respect to colleagues, patients and carers/families
• Shows evidence of service improvement empowering self & colleagues to deliver care in an ever-developing environment
• Shows evidence of compassionate care to self, colleagues and patients.