Clinical Nurse Specialist

Job overview

We are the Islington Memory and Dementia Navigator Service, a high-quality, successful Memory Service provided by the North London NHS Foundation Trust, who are passionate about supporting older adults living with dementia from diagnosis to end of life. We are looking for an experienced nurse who shares our passion to strive towards excellence in dementia care, with a keen interest in service development and quality improvement and who encourages a workplace based on our Trust’s values where staff and service users feel safe, valued and are empowered.

If you are a dynamic and current  Band 6 Nurse seeking fresh experiences, and to work in dementia care for older people and their carers, we would love to hear from you.

We’re keen to recruit someone with the right values and behaviours who can help us deliver our services priorities:

• Early and effective intervention – we offer a range of evidence-based interventions for those living with dementia and their care givers from diagnosis to end of life • Helping people to live well – we use a holistic care planning approach to ensure people can live well with dementia • Research and innovation – we promote opportunities for research with our patients and carers • Keeping our service users, carers and staff safe – we have several QI projects in the service to develop safe and effective ways of working

Do you share these values? If so, read on…

Main duties of the job

As a Clinical Specialist Nurse you will provide Nursing leadership, in particular supervising non qualified staff to support a large caseload of people living with Dementia and their care givers.

You will work alongside other lead practitioners to support staff and team development across Southern boroughs (C&I) SAMH teams. You will support team members in the Memory Service through our own integrated MDT and in collaboration with external partners.

You will hold your own caseload of older adults with Dementia who require complex mental, physical and social care interventions.

We are a busy service and caseloads are reflective of this. This requires you to have good organisational skills and an ability to work independently. The role involves visiting patients at home and you therefore must be able to get around Islington using Public Transport and/or walking/cycling.

You’ll be able to demonstrate significant experience in working with older people and/or dementia care, excellent communication and interpersonal skills and clear leadership skills.

Being computer literate is a must and you have to be able to use Word, Excel and other relevant IT systems.

You will also be responsible for supervising other members of the team.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• The post holder will work as a key clinical member of the multidisciplinary Islington Memory & Dementia Navigator Service (MDNS), delivering high-quality, person-centred clinical reviews, diagnosis support, and post-diagnostic interventions for individuals presenting with cognitive impairment and dementia.
• The post holder will also participate in the weekly duty rota, undertaking screening of referrals, responding to urgent clinical queries, and providing clinical advice and support to colleagues and external partners as required, and to service users and their families.
• The role focuses on providing (clinical input) dementia reviews for service users and their carers; enabling people to live well with dementia and working collaboratively with Primary Care Networks (PCNs), GPs, social care, and voluntary sector partners across Islington.
• The post holder will hold a defined caseload and deliver specialist dementia interventions, contribute to diagnostic and post-diagnostic pathways in line with NICE guidance, support carers and families holistically, and undertake leadership responsibilities including supervision, mentoring, and deputising for the Team Manager as required.
• The post holder will ensure care is safe, effective, culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and recovery-focused, aligned with Trust strategy and local population needs.