Macmillan Associate Specialist Palliative Care

Job overview

We are offering an exciting opportunity to join the established and dynamic multi-professional Specialist Palliative Care Team at Stepping Hill Hospital as a Band 6 Associate Specialist Palliative Care Nurse.

We are looking for a highly motivated, innovative Registered Nurse with a relevant degree or portfolio of evidence working at this level. In addition a specialist qualification or significant experience working  with patients with complex needs.

Able to demonstrate evidence of recent professional development in palliative care with developed palliative care clinical practice experience, knowledge and skills.

Applicants will have excellent advanced communication skills and experience of multi-professional team working. They must also have a commitment to the delivery of high quality patient care and ideally have experience of managing a clinical caseload.

An ability to work autonomously with excellent time management skills is essential. The service covers a 7 day rota, therefore flexible working is required to provide this.

Main duties of the job

Main Duties and Responsibilities

The Post holder will:

• Provide evidence-based specialist palliative care, advice and support to patients with a diagnosis of cancer or other life-threatening illness, and their carers.  Working collaboratively with multi-professionals across primary and secondary care and liaising with the Macmillan Specialist Care Nurses where appropriate.
• Provide specialist palliative care advice, education and training to all members of the multi professional team across all care settings as the service requires.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will:

• Under the supervision of the Specialist Palliative Care team, manage a caseload of patients with complex palliative care needs.
• Provide palliative care advice on symptom control, disease treatments, psychological and social issues to support a high standard of care to patients with complex needs.
• Work collaboratively to ensure that patients with specialist palliative care needs and their carers are met, involving other members of the Palliative Care Multi-disciplinary Team as appropriate.
• Attend and contribute to the palliative care weekly multi-disciplinary team meeting maintaining effective communication across the spectrum of professional carers.
• Use effective and empathic advanced communication skills to support patients and carers when they are dealing with uncertainty and coping with bad news.
• Work with other members of the Specialist Palliative Care Team to develop and provide appropriate training and education for the multi-disciplinary team and other healthcare professionals that improves the quality of palliative care provision.
• Work with other members of the Specialist Palliative Care Team to implement initiatives such as local and national guidance that improve the quality of palliative care.
• Ensure own professional development in line with appraisal and competency framework.
• Maintain contemporaneous electronic and written record keeping of patient care records.

The Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment and promote safeguarding by implementing the Trust’s policies and procedures, acting promptly on concerns, communicating effectively and sharing information appropriately.

If successful this vacancy will require an enhanced DBS check at a cost of £41.90. This cost will be deducted from your first Trust salary

In addition to this it will be a condition of your employment that you will join the DBS update service and pay the annual subscription fee of £13.