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Job summary

Main area
Palliative and End of Life Care
Grade
7
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
196-NM11527
Employer
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
Guys Hospital
Town
London
Salary
£51,488 - £57,802 p.a inc HCA
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
06/05/2024 23:59
Interview date
22/05/2024

Employer heading

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust logo

Clinical Nurse Specialist - Palliative & End of Life Care

7

Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.

Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.

Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions. 

Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.

In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.

We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.

Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.

The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.

We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.



Job overview

Clinical Nurse Specialist -Palliative & End of Life Care (Advance Care Planning)

We are looking for an ambitious and experienced Clinical Nurse Specialist with experience in quality improvement and advance care planning, to join our well established multidisciplinary Palliative and End of Life Care Team at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

We provide fully integrated 24/7 clinically effective, efficient and high-quality care to people with complex specialist palliative and end of life care needs, based on current evidence and best practice across inpatient and community settings. Our service also includes a dedicated End of Life Care team providing rapid response to patients in the dying phase and an overnight service (Pal@Home) to support people to remain in their preferred place of care.

If you are looking for an amazing opportunity for career progression and to expand your skills in quality improvement, research or audit, then please come and join our team. We are a member of the Palliative Care Clinical Academic Group, providing unique access to world leading researchers in the field. You will have the opportunity to develop your teaching skills through delivering training across the wider Trust. We support our staff wellbeing through clinical supervision as well as multiple team and Trust wide initiatives. 

We really look forward to welcoming you to our team!

Closing: 6/05/2024

Interview: 22/05/2024

Main duties of the job

We want to improve the way people talk about dying. By “people” we mean patients, carers, and professionals. To do this, we developed a campaign called ‘Let’s Talk’ in our hospitals and community about planning for the future, with special focus on the complex decision making around cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and DNACPR (Do Not Attempt CPR) decisions, emergency treatment planning and other aspects of planning for the future.  Our focus is to improve and embed the training we provide to professionals as well as the level of information we provide to our patients and carers so they can meaningfully engage in advance care planning.

The post holder will be responsible for implementing and sustaining this approach using the Let’s Talk materials across the organisation, measuring impact using quality improvement methodology.

The post holder will be required to map and scope the use of Advance Care Planning, Treatment Escalation Plans and London Urgent Care Plan across the organisation.

You will also provide specialist advice and assessment on pain and other physical symptoms as well as psychological, emotional, social and spiritual concerns. Our team includes nursing, pharmacy, medical, social work, and psychology colleagues. Our Band 7 nurses participate in developing our Band 6 nurses within the team with support from our Matrons, Consultant Nurse & Deputy Head of Nursing. The post requires working across both inpatient hospital and the community teams.

 

 

Working for our organisation

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.

The Palliative Care team provides specialist information and supportive care to people facing serious illness. This includes symptom control and advance care planning. We recognise that emotional, spiritual, family and financial worries can be just as important as physical problems and we support with these aspects of care as well.

Our Palliative and End of Life Care team includes specialist nurses and doctors, pharmacists, social workers, psychological support staff and administrative staff to help you cope with the consequences of serious illnesses such as cancer and long-term health conditions. We are able to see patients in hospital, in their own home, and in our outpatient clinics. We work closely with GPs, hospital doctors and community nurses, as well as other local hospitals and hospices, to support our patients and those important to them.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Main Duties and Responsibilities

  • Engaging patients and carers with ACP, Let’s Talk & UCP
  • To provide education and information for patient support groups on ACP, Let’s Talk & UCP
  • To advocate and promote the value of ACP with health care professionals within the acute and community settings
  • To build knowledge and confidence of ACP discussions ensuring a consistent approach across the acute and community settings
  • Synthesise relevant published evidence on approaches to ACP and present findings
  • To review and update current ‘Let’s Talk’, UCP & ACP materials
  • To map the current use of Advance Care Planning (ACP), Treatment Escalation Plans (TEP) and London Universal Care Plan (UCP) across the Organisation
  • To identify priority areas within GSTT for early implementation of ‘Let’s Talk’, UCP and ACP
  • Operate effectively and flexibly to ensure the rollout of the approach is able to meet changing requirements
  • Maintain effective links with internal and external stakeholders
  • Participate in working groups/committees in the wider South East London (SEL) community
  • Support grant applications as required to sustain the programme of work

Clinical Responsibilities

  • Be an excellent clinical role model and demonstrate advanced knowledge around Palliative and End of Life Care.
  • 80% of the role will be to undertake holistic palliative care assessments in inpatient and community settings as a palliative care clinical nurse specialist.
  • To participate in the palliative care CNS on call rota across inpatient and community settings including weekends and Bank holidays.
  • To keep abreast of relevant clinical issues and the national agenda that may impact the programme of work.
  • To ensure that clinical practice is in line with national and local guidelines and demonstrate clinical effectiveness.
  • To ensure that care delivered is inclusive and culturally sensitive.
  • To ensure that clinical practice reflects best evidence for meeting the needs of patients and families through continuous professional development.
  • To be able to communicate highly sensitive and complex information with patients, carers and professionals
  • To take part in regular professional supervision and appraisal.
  • To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry, recording and report writing in accordance with professional code of practice and Trust policies.
  • To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to palliative care and ensure that all relevant policies are adhered to
  • To support and /or deputise for the senior management team in palliative care in external meetings related to end of life care, when required to do so

Person specification

Values and behaviours

Essential criteria
  • Values and behaviours

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Experience of leading quality improvement projects
  • Extensive experience of working autonomously at an advanced level within the specialist area delivering effective patient focused care
  • Experience of audit, research & evidence based care
Desirable criteria
  • Experience of managing clinical projects and/or service development

Skills

Essential criteria
  • Experience of mentoring/supervising/ assessing junior staff in practice
  • Experience of involvement in educational initiatives
  • The ability to advocate, negotiate, analyse, influence and make decisions
  • Ability to work within a team as well as independently, organise and prioritise workload
  • Good communication and relationship building skills
  • Ability to assess highly complex situations
  • Proven skills of work in a multi-disciplinary manner
  • Advanced clinical, managerial and leadership skills in specialty.
  • Evidence of teaching skills
  • Ability to critically analyse, interpret data and present to multiple audience
  • Ability to carry out audit and research
Desirable criteria
  • Ability to interpret and analyse complex data and findings

Qualifications / Education

Essential criteria
  • Registered General Nurse/Degree
  • Specialist professional knowledge of mentorship, education and development practice to Masters level equivalent
  • Mentorship Qualification
  • Evidence of continuous personal, professional and academic development
Desirable criteria
  • To have or working towards a masters degree
  • Quality improvement training

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Timewise helps businesses to attract and develop the best talent through flexible working.Care quality commission - GoodDisability confident employer

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Joey Bate
Job title
Matron
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
02071884754
Additional information

If you wish to discuss this role further, please contact the palliative care senior nurses on the above email address, or by phone.