Breast Cancer Clinical Nurse Specialist

Job description

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
CLINICAL RESPONSIBILITY
• Acts as a key-worker for a clinical caseload, co-ordinating care and providing easy access for ongoing support for patients.
• To contribute to multidisciplinary meetings as a core member to advocate for the patient and representing nursing views.
• Puts quality at the heart of practice by delivering evidence based individualised and personalised care through holistic needs assessment, planning, evaluation of care and all care interventions.
• To undertake nurse led clinics and perform advanced clinical skills and assessment relating to diagnosis and treatment.
• Collect, collate, evaluate and report information, maintaining accurate patient records.
• Involve patients and carers/relatives in the planning and delivery of care and development of services.
• In accordance with local protocols, order, monitor and interpret investigative procedures in a clinically effective and cost efficient manner to support patient diagnosis, initiate further assessment and ongoing treatment as required.
• To support the medical team in meeting the faster diagnosis standard in cancer waiting times
• To educate and promote self-management for patients through risk stratified follow up for lung cancer patients who have completed treatment
• Work collaboratively using effective communication with other stakeholders, professionals and agencies across health and social services to ensure patient needs are met, especially in relation to ongoing care and support.
• To respond to unpredictable clinical events and take the necessary corrective action.
• Ensuring your own and others clinical practice is patient centred and evidence based in accordance with the NMC Code of Practice & other professional codes and standards
• Monitoring and maintaining high standards of documentation and record keeping in line with the NMC Standard for Record Keeping. Having systems and processes in place for daily checking and challenging any inaccuracies or omissions.
• Contribute to the health promotion agenda with the local health economy.
• To undertake non-medical prescribing duties within the legal framework for nurse prescribing and adhere to the Trust's Policy for Non-medical Prescribing.
• In keeping with the NMC 'Code of Professional Conduct' and 'Standards of Proficiency for Nurse and Midwife Prescribers', keep up to date with best prescribing practice in relation to the management of conditions within his/her specialist area.
• Undertake regular audits of his/her prescribing practice.
LEADERSHIP
• Acts as a role model demonstrating high standards of care and providing clinical leadership to others as a mentor and undertaking appraisals where appropriate.
• Provide specialist, expert clinical knowledge to clinical colleagues, patients, carers and relatives, as an expert practitioner, liaise, guide and advise the multi-disciplinary team and external agencies in the provision of optimum patient care.
• Individuals will be highly visible in their clinical areas, working alongside, and leading the team in a clinical supervisory role.
• Proactively maintain and foster clear lines of communication between the clinical staff and the Care Group management team
• Act as a conduit between ward staff to ensure effective communication between the multidisciplinary teams and the ward.
• Evaluate service delivery against key performance targets, national quality measures identify areas for improvement and initiate change.
• Collect, collate quantitative and qualitative data to provide evidence of quality, effectiveness and outcomes, producing regular formal and an annual service reports.

EDUCATION
• Lead the development of patient focused education, including training self-manage ongoing consequences of treatment.
• Participate and influences in the development of others through education and training.
• Address specific health targets related to own area of practice through education.
• Demonstrates high level clinical, technical and research skills through breadth and depth of knowledge.
• Demonstrates continuous evaluation of practice, making changes where appropriate.
• Promotes the service and clinical excellence by publishing and presenting innovations, audit and research.
• Takes personal responsibility lifelong learning and personal development through clinical supervision, appraisal and actively engages with learning and development opportunities in line with the ACCEND framework

• Participate in regular 1:1s and IPR with Lead Nurse for Cancer & Palliative Care

• Ensure own compliance and compliance of others with regard to mandatory training and PREP requirements.

SERVICE DEVELOPMENT AND IMPROVEMENT
• Develops new skills in response to emerging knowledge and techniques.
• Standards of patient care are continually evaluated and improved, embrace new ideas and instigate and manage change within a complex environment for the benefit of patient care.
• Act as clinical resource within the Trust.
• Assist in the development of induction programmes, guiding practice, assessing competence, enabling and supporting learning.
• Continually monitor standards of care and contribute to improvement of care through audit and research, including participation in the national audit programme, quality surveillance measure and review and implementation of NICE guidance.

WORKING RELATIONSHIPS AND COMMUNICATION
• Key working relationships:, with the Cancer General Service manager, Deputy head of Nursing and Lead Nurse for Cancer & Palliative Care and oncology staff, XXXX MDT team, Acute Oncology team, Acute Oncology CNS, and Chemotherapy unit
• Demonstrates skills conflict resolution and competent negotiation skills when dealing with difficult or challenging situations.
• Communicate effectively verbally and via formal documentation and electronic sources, with all members of the nursing, multidisciplinary team, patients, and their relatives and discuss complex issues to ensure patients receive optimum care.
• Attend meetings relevant to the service to represent patient and nursing issues and disseminate information to relevant parties.
• To ensure accurate and comprehensive nursing records are maintained using appropriate documentation in line with trust policy and NMC code of conduct.
• Work in partnership with the patients and relatives and other health care professionals to embed their involvement in the sphere of practice and service development in care.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• 1st level registered nurse with valid registration
• Educated to first level degree
• Post registration qualification in specialist area
• Evidence of continuing professional development- masters level learning/NMP/IRMER or willing to work towards
• Recognised teaching and assessing qualification
• Advanced communication skills

Desirable criteria

• Non- medical Precribing
• IRMER training
• Masters Qualification

Experience

Essential criteria

• Relevant post registration experience at band 6 or above in cancer, palliative care or the speciality
• Experience of successful multi-agency working
• Management of clinical Leadership experience
• Experience of requesting imaging as a NMQR
• Experience of teaching and assessing in the clinical area
• Experience of developing and undertaking clinical audit
• Experience of undertaking nurse led clinics
• Participation in service development and implementation of change

knowledge

Essential criteria

• In-depth Knowledge of professional issues and policy relating to the specialist area.
• Demonstrate knowledge and application of Clinical Governance
• Demonstrates knowledge of Clinical audit and research
• Demonstrates knowledge of Risk Management
• Demonstrate knowledge of understanding of Clinical Issues - assessing, planning, implementing and evaluating patient care

Desirable criteria

• IT systems relevant to Trust and Speciality

Skills

Essential criteria

• Excellent Interpersonal and communication skills
• Exemplar written communication skills
• Able to be a positive and effective team worker in the multidisciplinary team
• Able to manage to work autonomously
• Ability to prioritise workload, demonstrate good organisational skills
• Ability to adapt to change within the working situation
• Able to perform advanced clinical skills
• Ability to support and care for patients within complex clinical scenarios.

Desirable criteria

• Intermediate IT skills eg Microsoft office
• Ability to produce and present written reports and data.

It is an exciting time to join the newly formed Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. We run two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Our 7,500 staff provide high quality care for a growing population of around 700,000 across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas.

You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career. Travel between hospital sites may be required. We have state-of-the art facilities placing us at the heart of cutting edge health care. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology available.

All new staff will be subject to a probationary period covering their first six months in post.

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