Specialist Nutrition Nurse

Job overview

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced and driven registered nurse to join our Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse team (band 6, 26.25hrs/week), as part of the Christie nutrition and dietetic team in our world class cancer centre, providing an opportunity to develop your practice within this specialist area of nursing.

If you are you passionate and have and interest or experience of working within in nutrition and/or oncology, and experience of varied feeding tubes, such as gastrostomies, nasogastric tubes, nasojejunal tubes and want to develop your skills further, then this is the post for you. The experienced and well-established team will support with competency and confidence development for this specialist role.

As a member of the Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse team, you will work closely with the dietetic team, and, as well as collaborate with the wider MDT and stake holders, to deliver high quality patient centred care for patients requiring artificial nutrition.

Main duties of the job

As a band 6 Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse you will work within the team to provide a specialist nutrition support nurse service for patients aimed at continually improving standards of care and facilitating a multidisciplinary team approach. You will participate in the nurse management of patients receiving artificial nutrition support via enteral feeding, utilising both gastrostomies, jejunostomies, nasogastric and nasojejunal routes, as well as supporting patients through the HPN (Home Parenteral nutrition) referral process, and provision of venting gastrojejunostomy support for some of these patients. Working with the team you will ensure the nutritional needs of patients are met, providing counselling, tube training, tube placement/replacement, follow-up/aftercare for patients receiving artificial nutrition support, this includes supporting the gastrostomy drop clinic in conjunction with the interventional radiology nursing team. You will work alongside the specialist nutrition support nurse team in the development and delivery of education and training programmes for health care professionals in the Trust & at regional level on nursing related nutritional care. You will be an active member of the wider Nutrition and Dietetic team, and an active role model for the service. Within this role you will work closely with the wider MDT and external agencies to ensure national nutritional performance and clinical standards are met. Please see job description for full duties

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical

Enteral

• To support the senior nutrition nurse and be responsible for own caseload providing an expert assessment plan and evaluation within the specialist area for enteral tubes
• To conduct regular ward visits to ensure compliance with nutritional standards and act as a resource for nutrition care planning and feeding tubes care delivery.
• To be involved in patient selection and education regarding enteral and parenteral nutrition support.
• To attend multidisciplinary / best interest meetings to discuss management of patients requiring enteral or parenteral nutrition at home.
• To maintain accurate, comprehensive and up to date documentation on the patient electronic system of individual patients in line with local and national standards and trust policy on confidentiality.
• To cover and support the organisation of home parenteral nutrition feed discharge patients as required alongside other nutrition nurse colleagues
• To counsel and educate patients during the consent process for placement of enteral feeding tubes.
• To be competent to place nasogastric feeding tubes.
• To coordinate the gastrostomy service in collaboration with the senior nutrition nurse and interventional radiology team.
• To provide follow-up after interventional procedures for nutritional support and help with audit of outcome data.
• To be able to place secondary gastrostomy tube devices in hospital.
• To work alongside the dietitians and be involved in the setting up of a home enteral feed to ensure a safe and timely discharge.
• To educate and support the patient, carers, nursing staff and district nurses on the care of enteral feeding tubes before and after discharge.
• To work with the senior nutrition nurse to develop the nutritional nursing care service to patients in line with national standards.
• To work closely with the nutrition nurse teams, dietitians, nurse leaders and nurse clinicians to promote good practice and lead and support changes in practice
• To take an active role in audit and annually supporting the review of nursing guidelines, policies and patient information concerning enteral and parenteral nutrition in conjunction with the dietitians and senior nutrition nurse.
• To identify clinical issues and incidents within the Trust that reduces the quality of care within the specialist service. Devise strategies to counter these to ensure the delivery of safe and effective care.
• To maintain patient data and statistics for service development
• To attend and participate in departmental, professional update meetings and trust nutrition related meetings.
• To be responsible for own clinical professional development (CPD) to maintain competency and to ensure best practice.
• Take an active part in professional networks to ensure the exchange of knowledge and ideas, both locally and nationally. Contribute to the development of national policy.
• In conjunction with the senior nutrition nurse provide specialist nursing knowledge of nutritional care to medical and nursing staff and students
• In conjunction with the senior nutrition nurse deliver an education programme on the nurse management of oncology patients receiving nutrition support internally and externally at regional level to nursing staff and other health care professionals.
• To work with the senior nutrition nurse to develop the nutrition link nurse group and be accountable to the Nutrition steering group.
• To promote good nursing practice in enteral and parenteral feeding to ward staff.
• To participate in the education of nursing staff on nutritionally screening patients, care planning and protected mealtimes and carry out regular audits.