Clinical Nurse Specialist: Cancer Rapid Diagnostic Centre (RDC)

Job description

Job responsibilities

Responsibilities of the role include:

In conjunction with the Head of Nursing and Macmillan Lead Cancer Nurse, this role will help to deliver the ambitions set out within the NHS long term Plan for Cancer within their clinical setting, including diagnosing cancer earlier, improving quality of lie outcomes, improving patient experience, reducing variations and inequalities, monitoring and maintaining professional and care standards, work collaboratively, manage complaints as per Trust policy and lead the specialist nursing contribution to the governance agenda.

Lead by example and act as a positive role model for all staff, taking responsibility for own professional development.

Provide leadership that promotes patient focused care.

Work alongside RDC Clinical team to provide nursing clinical leadership across the RDC service and responsibility for ensuring the delivery of high quality patient care.

Practice autonomously and be self-directed, including leading on providing excellent patient care in line with developed RDC pathways and being a clinical champion to cascade best clinical practice.

Be accountable for coordinating patient care with the RDC pathway navigators.

Provide clinical leadership and line management of staff if appropriate, ensuring the delivery of the highest professional standards through staff development and individual performance appraisal/review.

Take responsibility for the implementation of audit, quality and risk management initiatives and support the evaluation of the RDC service.

Represent the Trust and the specialty at both internal and external meetings related to the RDC service as appropriate.

Being responsible for evaluating and delivering health promotion and screening advice, given opportunistically to patients as appropriate.

Maintain personal standards of conduct and behaviour, which are consistent with Trust and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) standards and requirements.

Actively contribute to, and support agreed developments within the division, relevant to the specialty.

Act as key worker and lead on patient and carer communication issues and co-ordinate the patient pathway.

Provide expert nursing advice and support to other Health Care Professionals (HCP).

Actively engage service users throughout the development of the RDC and pathways

Accept referrals directly from primary and secondary care into the service as appropriate

With the key medical staff, help lead, organise, develop and deliver a service involving follow-up of individual patients

Enhance the quality of care provided to patients presenting with potential symptoms of cancer-early recognition, rapid onward referral to specialist cancer or specialist palliative care teams in hospital or community as appropriate

Provide assessment (including electronic Holistic Needs Assessment) and evaluation of individual patient needs referring to other multidisciplinary team members, as appropriate, using set guidelines and protocols; this includes comprehensively assessing patient suitability and level of risk using service proformas and policies, contributing to the recommendation of best treatment options using clinical protocols; this may include referral straight to CT

Order appropriate clinical investigations as required within the required timeframe

Attend any RDC Clinical/ MDT meetings and contribute to the discussions and feedback patient assessment / care planning and management decisions as appropriate as the key worker

Participate in the decision making process with the medical and multidisciplinary team to ensure appropriateness of referral to the RDC

Lead, organise, develop and deliver a clinical service (and caseload as appropriate) on a day-to-day basis in the RDC service including follow-up of individual patients care or to ensure there are appropriate onwards referrals to other clinical teams if required as appropriate

Ensure that the consultation environment is conducive to a professional patient assessment , positively reflecting the reputation of the service and that it provides the patient maximum privacy and dignity

Collect, collate, evaluate and report information, maintaining accurate patient records

Ensure effective contribution to clinical decisions regarding changes to patient care interventions

Provide telephone help/advice for patients and carers along with the RDC Navigators

Maintain a high clinical profile and facilitate application of theory to practice, whilst carrying out clinical duties in accordance with National, Network, Trust and local standards and policies, in order to improve the quality of care

The post-holder will:

Ensure objectives for the service are appropriate, delivered on time, to a high quality and in a cost effective manner, adjusting plans as required

Support the RDC Project Team to work with a wide range of stakeholders (including patients & carers) to develop clear and deliverable plans on any redesign and improvement work required for the service resulting from service evaluation and other feedback including education and training initiatives

Support joint working between teams and between primary, secondary (and tertiary where applicable) care on identified project components

Support the RDC Project Team in managing the quality of key programme documentation, product development including commissioning specification, policies and other documents

Support the RDC Project Team in highlighting exceptions and risks ensuring mitigating actions can be taken to keep the programme on track

Support RDC Project Team on local scoping work to identify gaps and dependencies

Report and investigate any adverse incidents relating to the management of the RDC service, making recommendations as appropriate and taking actions to avoid the adverse incident in the future

Support the RDC Project Team as required to collate qualitative and quantitative information and lead appropriate analysis to develop robust business cases and contribute to development of the service

Lead, propose and implement policy/service change which may impact beyond own area of work

Support the RDC Project Team and the Cancer Management Team to design policies and guidelines relevant to the role.

Contribute to defining and clarifying the strategic direction of the service with the Macmillan Lead Cancer Nurse for Cancer and RDC Project Team

Engage and facilitate all interested stakeholders of the service in the planning of service development as appropriate in conjunction with the Cancer Management Team.

Continually review and evaluate policies, strategies and service development to maintain and improve care delivery as appropriate

Encourage and facilitate changes in working practice in line with Tameside & Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust policies.

Develop and facilitate team working across functional boundaries

Work with the Clinical Teams to enable delivery of the clinical governance agenda and the continual improvement of services

Ensure the involvement of users in service planning and development and that their views, including complaints are effectively sought, channelled and acted upon in line with Trust policy

To contribute to local/regional/national groups related to the RDC

Physical Skills and Effort

Ability to travel between Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust and Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, and across Greater Manchester footprint to attend meetings and conferences.

Please refer to the Job Description for full duties of the role

Person Specification

Certificates

Essential

• First level registered nurse, current registration with NMC
• Health related degree or on a degree pathway
• Relevant post registration Programme(s)
• Clinical examinations course (or willingness to undertake)
• Undertaken or willingness to undertake Trust's online e-training for Non-Medical Referrers, working under a recognised scope of practice. (ordering radiology investigations)
• Non-medical prescribing or willingness to undertake training
• Teaching/assessing qualification/modules
• Undertaken or willingness to undertake advanced communication skills training
• Evidence of continuous personal and professional development
• Experience of utilising research and audit methodology in methods within service
• Experience of line-managing staff and undertaking appraisals
• Working knowledge and application of IT systems including MS Office and Windows systems
• Demonstrates up-to-date knowledge in cancer and patient pathways
• Knowledge of the prevention and early diagnosis element of the cancer pathway
• Experience of undertaking nurse-led clinics
• Experience of working within cancer services
• Clear presentation skills
• Ability to empathise and build rapport with patients, carers, clinicians, front-line staff, managers, users and others
• Effective written skills including report writing
• Well-developed communication, motivational and negotiation skills
• Experience in interpreting and presenting data
• Ability to present project information clearly
• Proven project planning skills
• Ability to work effectively in a team with appropriate support and supervision for junior members. Using effective people skills to maintain positive and productive relationships at all levels
• Self-motivated
• Positive manner
• Demonstrates honesty and integrity and promotes organisational values
• Promotes change, viewing it as an opportunity to learn and develop
• Able to observe confidentiality
• Ability to deal sensitively with emotional and distressing circumstance if required
• Ability to travel to different sites as required

Desirable

• Leadership development programme/modules
• Experience in leading improvement and development work
• Experience of leading service delivery in a health care context
• Experience of developing guidelines and reports
• Experience of working in/with primary care
• Awareness of health promotion and cancer screening programmes within cancer services
• Experience and understanding of undertaking audit
• Demonstrates and awareness of working in a multi-disciplinary team
• Ability to understand a broad range of high complex information and present this effectively to multiple audiences
• Ability to identify and highlight risks and issues
• Ability to manage personal workload and be able to handle ad hoc urgent requests without prior notification and manage that effectively
• Experience of working within defined budgets and using financial processed

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

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

Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Tameside Hospital

Fountain Street

Ashton-Under-Lyne

OL6 9RW

Employer's website

https://www.tamesidehospital.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)