Practice Nurse

Job summary

We are one of the last remaining traditional small family practices and our much loved practice nurse, who has been with us for 25 years, is retiring.

This gives us an opportunity to rethink how we provide nursing care to our 2,200 patients. At this point we don't have fixed ideas and we are open to your suggestions.

This practice is consistently ranked in the top five in England for patient satisfaction and good relationships with our patients have always been important in our work.

What is important to us is that you are capable, that you fit in well into our small friendly team and that you can communicate well with our patients.

Don't let a lack of primary care experience put you off! If you fit these criteria you may well be just who we are looking for.

This advert says 0.32 WTE but we wanted to say "12-24 hours"- according to the candidates available.

As a guide we might look for 12 hours of health care assistant time at band 3 and 12 hours of band 5 or 6 nurse time. However more of one and less of the other might also work well. Our ideal working hours may prove challenging for one person, particularly if they don't live locally on the other hand, the opportunities of working at the Adderlane Surgery may just suit you perfectly!

We have not specified the Band of this post to avoid putting off the right candidate. If you are the right person, have limited experience, but are willing and able to learn then we would be happy to work with you.

Main duties of the job

You will be the senior, and maybe the only, nurse working at this practice. This is therefore not a highly specialised nurse role but rather is one which offers a breadth of responsibility and therefore requires a breadth of interest in primary care nursing.

Core responsibilities will include taking blood samples, checking blood pressures and giving injections including childhood immunisations and taking smears. Wider opportunities include recording and assessing other parameters such as respiratory function measures, ECGs and neuropathy testing in diabetes.

Beyond this are opportunities to be involved in the management of hypertension, asthma, COPD and diabetes according to your abilities, under the supervision of the doctors, and with training offered as needed.

Underlying all of this we are looking for someone who is good at helping our patients feel at ease, and encouraging them to take part in looking after their own health a good practice nurse will find many opportunities for health education and for supporting people through health problems and life in general.

This post offers an opportunity to play an important role in the care of over 2,200 patients and to build up important relationships within the practice team and with the friendly community we serve.

About us

The Adderlane Surgery is one of the smallest family practices in the North East and can trace its origins to the 1870s. We believe in the importance of ready accessibility and approachability of all our team members and good long-term relationships within the team and between ourselves and the community we serve. Long term personal continuity of care is at the heart of what we seek to provide and we are proud of the fact that we have worked together in knowing our families over many years.

This is general practice with strengths you might have imagined 40 or 50 years ago something which our patients greatly appreciate and which we enjoy.

The latest GP patient survey ranks us as one of the best five practices in England and has done for a number of years.

We recognise that over-stressed staff of all grades do not perform to the best of their ability and we work hard to reduce the risk of our team members being overstrained. There are times when we are busy, but we feel these are well balanced by the times we are not and we work to make each other's work lives a pleasure and not a pain.

We are currently a team of two doctors, one nurse, a manager, a secretary and two receptionists and we all have an important role to play in delivering the great care we seek to provide why not come and join us?