Practice Nurse

Job description

Job responsibilities

The Practice Nurse is a registered healthcare professional responsible for delivering high-quality, evidence-based nursing care to patients across the practice population. Working autonomously and as part of a multidisciplinary team, the Practice Nurse plays a key role in health promotion, disease prevention, chronic disease management, and supporting the overall provision of safe, patient-centred primary care services.

Clinical Care Delivery:

• Independently assess, plan, implement, and evaluate care for patients within the scope of professional practice.
• Undertake and manage a range of nursing duties including wound care, dressings, cervical cytology, immunisations (including childhood and travel vaccines), venepuncture, ECGs, and ear care.
• Contribute to long-term condition management clinics (e.g., asthma, COPD, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease).
• Provide health screening and health promotion services, including NHS Health Checks, lifestyle advice, and support for smoking cessation and weight management.
• Triage and manage minor ailments and injuries within scope of competence, escalating where appropriate.
• Support patients in self-management of their conditions through education and care planning.
• Promote infection prevention and control standards in all clinical areas.
• Support and mentor junior nursing staff, healthcare assistants, and students as appropriate.
• Work collaboratively with GPs, nursing colleagues, pharmacists, and other members of the multidisciplinary team to deliver high-quality, coordinated care.

Chronic Disease management

Participate in chronic disease management clinics including Diabetes, Asthma, COPD, Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), and other long-term conditions.

Undertake regular patient reviews in accordance with national and local clinical guidelines.

Monitor, record, and manage patients clinical parameters such as blood pressure, peak flow, spirometry, HbA1c, cholesterol, and BMI.

Provide patient education and support to promote self-management and lifestyle modification.

Ensure care plans are developed, reviewed, and updated regularly to reflect patients needs.

Contribute to the achievement of Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) indicators through accurate record-keeping, timely recall, and proactive patient management.

Work with the wider clinical team to audit chronic disease registers, identify patients for review, and improve population health outcomes.

Participate in quality improvement initiatives, local enhanced services, and practice-level public health campaigns (e.g., flu vaccination, hypertension detection, weight management).

Health and Safety-Risk management

• Comply with all Health and Safety policies and take reasonable care to avoid injury to self or others, in line with the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
• Follow agreed safe working procedures and report incidents and near misses through the practices incident reporting system.
• Maintain infection control standards and ensure equipment and clinical areas are clean and safe.
• The post holder must always comply with agreed safe working procedures and reporting incidents

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The post-holder must co-operate with all policies and procedures designed to ensure equality of employment. Co-workers, patients and visitors must be treated equally irrespective of gender, ethnic origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion ETC.

Confidentiality

The post holder must always maintain complete confidentiality of the material and information that they handle. Any matters of a confidential nature, or, information relating to diagnosis and treatment of patients and individual staff records must, under no circumstances be divulged or passed onto any unauthorised person or persons. The post holder must respect patient named confidentiality in keeping with Caldicott principles.

Data Protection

The postholder is required to ensure that any personal information obtained, processed or held (on a computer or otherwise), is done so in a fair and lawful way and that the data held and processed is only for the specified registered purposes, in particular personal data relating to patients.

Business Conduct and Governance

The postholder is required to comply with all policies and procedures in force and ensuring that the reporting requirements, systems and duties of action put into place are complied with.

In upholding the good governance and standards, Peacock Surgery has a clinical and corporate framework, which the postholder is expected to comply with and failure in this regard may lead to disciplinary action.

Training and Development

The successful post holder will be expected to be responsible for their continuing professional development and to take a proactive approach to maintaining personal and professional effectiveness in an evolving role.

Rehabilitation of Offenders Act

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

This job description is not a definite or exhaustive list of responsibilities but identifies the key responsibilities and tasks of the post holder. The specific objectives of the post holder will be subject to review as part of the individual performance review process.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Essential criteria
• Essential Criteria : NMC-registered Registered General Nurse (RGN). Experience of working in a primary care or community setting. Competent in chronic disease management and immunisation programmes. Excellent communication, organisation, and clinical decision-making skills.

Desirable

• Desirable criteria
• Desirable Criteria: Cervical cytology training and current update. Knowledge of QOF, Local Enhanced Services, and NHS frameworks. Asthma/COPD/Diabetes diploma or equivalent qualifications. Mentorship or teaching qualification.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

Peacock Surgery

Address

Elsenham Surgery

Station Road

Elsenham

Bishop's Stortford

Hertfordshire

CM22 6LA

Employer's website

https://www.thestanstedsurgery.nhs.uk/practice-information/ (Opens in a new tab)