Frailty Practitioner

Job overview

The role would be to work as an Elderly Nurse Practitioner rotating between our general hospital sites, community hospital sites and the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital. Our team of nurse practitioners support the medical teams trust wide and provide autonomous support in a number of our community rehabilitation hospitals.

We also provide a frailty Assessment Service within the Emergency department at NSECH, assessing frail elderly patients and getting them to the right place first time around, reducing unnecessary moves where possible. We are also in the process of expanding services and settling up virtual wards, managing frail patients within their own home environment that would normally be managed in hospital.

We welcome applications from nurses who feel they can undertake this role and meet the demands of this challenging but rewarding post. We would welcome applications  who have the knowledge, skills and drive to work in this exciting and expanding service, working as an autonomous practitioner within the team.

Main duties of the job

• Providing services to support our frail elderly patients trust wide in a variety of settings.
• Conducting thorough patient histories.
• Conducting clinical assessments.
• Requesting appropriate investigations, e.g bloods, X-ray, CT scans etc, where necessary.
• Interpreting the results of investigations.
• Making differential diagnosis following assessment and investigations.
• Commencing treatment plans following diagnosis including prescribing where necessary.
• Caring for our patients in a holistic manner ensuring any additional referrals to other health care professionals are made to meet all of their individual care needs.
• Working across a variety of areas including the Emergency department, wards and some clinic work.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• This job will involve working at the interface with Elderly Care consultants.
• The post holder will develop the Scope of Nursing Practice and provide nursing excellence in patient care for our Elderly population. This will reinforce the concept of patient-centred care and take forward the Trust’s vision within Care of the Elderly.
• To provide specialist and advanced clinical skills support to medical staff and the nursing team.
• To triage patients, prioritising clinical need, highlighting and initiating treatment plans by following agreed Trust guidelines and protocols.
• To work autonomously assessing individual patient needs, initiating investigations, determining a differential diagnosis and initiating appropriate holistic, evidence based treatment and care.
• To co-ordinate clinical and support services whilst maintaining or improving the service.
• To role model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture within the trust. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coachingto promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams / departments and across organisational boundaries.