Cardiac Rehabilitation Counsellor

Job overview

Join Our Award‑Winning Cardiac Rehabilitation Service as a Cardiac Counsellor

We’re looking for a compassionate and motivated Cardiac Counsellor to join our established, award‑winning Cardiac Rehabilitation Service. You’ll become part of a highly skilled multidisciplinary team that includes nurses, physiotherapists, exercise physiologists, counsellors, cardiac rehab assistants, occupational therapists, practitioners, administrators and dedicated volunteers.

Our service supports patients across Ashford, Canterbury, South Kent Coast and Thanet, delivering rehabilitation in a wide range of community settings. This includes home visits, outpatient clinics in health centres, and group programmes in leisure centres and village halls—ensuring care is accessible, flexible and truly patient‑centred.

As a Cardiac Counsellor, you’ll play a vital role in helping patients adjust emotionally, socially and psychologically following a cardiac event. Working alongside the wider team, you’ll provide tailored support that empowers individuals to rebuild confidence, manage lifestyle changes and improve their overall wellbeing.

If you’re passionate about holistic rehabilitation and want to make a meaningful difference in a supportive, forward‑thinking service, we’d love to welcome you to our team.

Main duties of the job

As a key member of our award‑winning Cardiac Rehabilitation Service, you’ll play a vital role in supporting patients’ emotional and psychological recovery following a cardiac event. Your responsibilities will include:

• Planning, organising, delivering and promoting the Cardiac Rehab Counselling Service
• Providing 1:1 counselling and psychological support through a hybrid model—mainly from home via phone or video, with occasional sessions in NHS hospitals, clinics and patients’ homes
• Using appropriate therapeutic approaches to help patients adjust, build confidence and return to their daily lives as fully as possible
• Offering education, information and support on stress management in a safe, confidential environment, using a range of teaching styles to enhance wellbeing and quality of life
• Providing education about the counselling service and sharing counselling skills with the wider Cardiac Rehab team

This is a rewarding role for a counsellor who is passionate about holistic rehabilitation and wants to make a meaningful difference to patients’ recovery journeys.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please note: at this stage, the role is open only to colleagues currently employed within Kent and Medway NHS Trusts and the Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB). Nursing vacancies are also open to Student Nurses and Newly Qualified Nurses.

Job responsibilities

As a community Trust, many of our roles require individuals to be able to drive to perform their duties. Where driving is a requirement of the role, you will be asked to confirm that you hold a full UK driving licence or a full driving licence issued by an EU country (not exchanged from a non-EU country) to proceed with your application. We are committed to supporting candidates with disabilities into employment. If you are unable to drive due to a disability, please contact the Recruitment Team via [email protected], quoting the vacancy reference number, so we can support you further.

The job description and person specification gives you all the information you need about this role. Please look carefully at the criteria in the person specification and tell us what you have done that shows you meet this in your application. If you need an application form in an alternative format please let our recruitment team know. All information you supply on your application should, to the best of your knowledge, be true and accurate.

Still have questions? The recruiting manager would love to hear from you, their contact details can be found in the job advert.

We can get a lot of applications for some roles so to be in with the best chance of being shortlisted please make sure you apply as soon as possible. A vacancy may close early if there is a lot of interest in the job.

At KCHFT we strongly encourage colleagues in clinical and non-clinical roles who have direct or social contact with patients to be fully vaccinated. In this way we will be doing all we can to ensure your safety and that of your colleagues and the patients we serve.

Find out more about the community difference here.

Good luck! We can’t wait to meet you and welcome you to #teamKCHFT, #cometocommunity.