Sister/Charge Nurse - Community

To provide clinical, professional and managerial leadership to the nursing team, ensuring high standards of care are consistently delivered to palliative and end of life patients and families within their home (care home).

Main duties of the job

• Responsible for the performance of the Senior Community Register Nurses to include carrying out appraisals, performance management reviews, probation reviews, return to work interviews and sickness reviews.
• Ensure safe deployment of staffing resources to maintain minimum staffing ratios, managing and over-seeing the duty rota in the absence of the Team Manager.
• Participate in the recruitment and management of staff induction.
• Act as a role model in all aspects of clinical and non-clinical nursing practice.
• Provide support and guidance to nursing staff on complex patient care needs.
• Make appropriate use of the latest evidence base to supervise practice, audit clinical care, teach and support professional colleagues and to provide skilled leadership and clinical decision making.
• Provide formal and informal clinical supervision, support and mentorship.
• Identify where further development and support may be needed for collective groups of staff.
• Deliver informal and formal training sessions for staff and others.
• Contribute to the development of and implementation of a competency framework for nursing.

About us

St Michael's Hospice is nestled in the stunning Herefordshire countryside, in a state-of-the-art facility. We offer a competitive salary and benefits package, a transferrable NHS pension or you can enroll onto our own Hospice pension. We have a Life Assurance, and we offer a superb working environment and facilities, generous study leave allowance, discounts with local suppliers, individualised training needs analysis, advanced communication skills training, employee counselling service, free tea & coffee, a friendly & welcoming work environment, 30 days annual leave, plus bank holidays. We are one of the top 100 best not for profit organisations to work for and have been caring to make a difference, to patients living with a terminal illness and their families, across Herefordshire and beyond for 40 years.

Job responsibilities

Care Provision

• Oversee the planning and facilitation of care delivery to patients and families in the community setting.
• Ensure accurate assessment of care needs is undertaken along with appropriate individualised care, reviewing and evaluating as required.
• Responsible for the holistic assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of the needs of the patient.
• Ensure risk assessments are undertaken, actioned and the incident reporting process is followed.
• Contribute to the review of clinical standards and practice, with particular attention paid to the drive for the application of policies/procedures and evidence based practice.
• Awareness of EMIS Web supporting colleagues with training and use of new system.
• Provide expert advice on symptom management to GPs or other professionals, patients and families.
• Manage complaints in line with Hospice policy, escalating as appropriate.
• Deliver an advanced level of rehabilitative palliative care for patients with complex needs in order to enable people to live fully until they die.

Communication

• Ensure effective network working relationships with relevant organisations, primary care and other hospices as necessary to maintain effective patient and family care.
• Ensure the nursing voice is represented (including in ethical decision making).
• Ensure nursing staff maintain clinical records in line with hospice and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) guidance.
• Encourage patients/relatives/carers to express what is important to them to identify their needs, ensuring that this information is recorded and informs the care plan.
• Ensure nursing staff recognise and report any concerns or changes in patients' condition and/or families' wellbeing to colleagues.
• Onwardly refer patients and families to core hospice services.
• Promote collaborative working and effective communication between all members of the Hospice multidisciplinary team (MDT).
• Promote awareness of child and adult protection issues policy and guidelines.

Quality, Improvement, Audit & Research

• Awareness of data being captured accurately which feeds into end of month NHS reporting requirements to agreed deadlines.
• Identify and support audits and evaluation of work.
• Actively promote the use of outcome measures (OACC) to improve care planning and case management.
• Work with other disciplines to integrate best practice tools to minimise duplication of elements of care.
• Guarantee that there are systems in place to provide opportunities for both formal and informal user feedback.

Health and Safety

• Act at all times to promote the safety and wellbeing of staff members, patients, relatives and carers.
• Ensure nursing staff adhere to all safe systems of work to minimise risk and hazards, undertake risk assessments, document and implement risk reducing measures.
• Responsible for ensuring the Hospice Lone Working policy is adhered to by all community staff visiting patients in their homes. Be aware of own limitations and when to seek advice and help.

Education

• Participate and facilitate clinical and educational activities in collaboration with the inpatient unit lead nurses, creating a positive learning environment to enhance development in specialist palliative care.
• Attend mandatory training and service training opportunities.
• Develop and maintain own knowledge and skills in palliative care.
• Act as a role model to new staff members.

Person Specification

Experience

• Experience of managing a team.
• Experience and knowledge of specialist palliative care.
• Experience of nursing patients in the community setting.
• Knowledge of national and local health and social care initiatives.
• Specialist qualification in palliative care.
• Experience of undertaking advanced holistic assessments.

Qualifications

• Active NMC registration.
• Must be in possession of a full UK driving licence, be over 21 and have held a full licence for 12 months due to insurance purposes.
• Advanced Communication Skills Training.
• Teaching and mentorship qualification.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.