Job responsibilities
Main Duties and Responsibilities
Clinical Duties
The post holder will be clinically accountable for the Virtual Ward function, they will be expected to collaborate with colleagues (internally and across the system) and to work as a practitioner whose expertise demonstrably improves patient outcomes and experiences within their home environment or other out of hospital setting
The post holder will:
Act as an autonomous independent practitioner, providing expert clinical nursing practice by using advanced nursing skills, expert knowledge, analytical skills, and clinical decision-making.
Spend at least 60% of their time on direct clinical patient care providing expert assessment, treatment planning/monitoring and medication management (inclusive of non-medical prescribing).
Demonstrate a highly specialist and advanced level of clinical expertise, which includes a clear understanding of when to escalate a deteriorating patient/ situation.
Demonstrate highly developed decision-making and interpersonal skills, thorough a rapid holistic assessment of the patients conditions, to facilitate diagnosis and rehabilitation and improvement of quality of life in a timely way. This includes undertaking mental capacity act assessments where indicated.
Make difficult decisions and demonstrate critical thinking in relation to ethical and legal issues related to care delivery.
Lead the MDT meeting for the service, ensuring appropriate treatment and escalation plans are in place for all patients.
Have clinical oversight of safeguarding referrals/issues, actively ensuring outcomes are enacted and that patient safety is prioritised.
Be responsible for maintaining their own clinical skills and competencies in order to continue to practice at an advanced level.
Lead on the development of clinical pathways using evidence-based practice.
Contribute to the clinical and strategic direction for the development of the service, promoting the service and influence its strategic direction.
Promote a positive risk management approach within the service and where incidents arise the Nurse Consultant will ensure learning occurs and improvements to practice are made.
Ensure that all aspects of clinical governance are addressed by the team and reported to appropriate organisations.
Management and Leadership
The post holder will:
Provide expert clinical leadership to the Virtual Ward Team.
Inspire clinicians within the service, acting as a role model and demonstrating the role of advanced clinical practice.
Provide professional leadership, mentorship and supervision for colleagues working towards a higher level of practice.
Influence and create opportunities for the development of the service/clinical pathways in line with National and Clinical guidance.
Have advanced decision-making skills including operational judgements, managing conflicting views/reconciling inter and intra professional differences of opinion.
Maintain a high profile within the organisation, and across the BLMK system, and contribute to the achievement of organisational and system aims.
Develop a robust audit/review process to maximise clinical effectiveness and ensure that best practice/guidance is being utilised as a core element of care delivery.
Operationally ensure that staff have the right skills to undertake their roles, and that safer staffing needs are considered as a routine part of clinical safety risk assessments.
Communicate regionally, nationally, and internationally on area of specialist knowledge.
Teaching and Training
The post holder will:
Role model the commitment to lifelong learning.
Teach multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary groups within the Trust on a range of subjects relating to their specialist field on a range of bases: 1:1, to small groups, large groups at national and international conferences.
Ensure own self-development, clinically and academically is reviewed in an annual personal development plan and achieved.
Provide line management to Advanced Clinical Practitioners, undertaking yearly appraisals and ensuring training and development needs are addressed and achieved.
Ensure there is a clinical supervision structure in place for all clinical staff within the service, facilitating supervision and yearly appraisals of staff as required.
Ensure staff receive appropriate supervision and support in line with Trust policies.
Empower others to make safe and appropriate clinical decisions through professional development and expert role modelling.
Have a responsibility for publicising and disseminating ideas on good practice both through the writing for professional publications and the development of guidelines, protocols, and educational material for use by staff and patients, including development of policies for the specialist service.
Liaise with academic institutions to develop educational programmes that are relevant to clinical practice and ensure that the opportunity to expose students (both pre and post-graduate) to credible, visionary practitioners is maximised through appropriate colleagues. Educational links should promote multidisciplinary working.
Build on links with universities and other Higher Education Institutions to develop the research element of this post.
Maintaining own professional development and requirement to take part in appraisal and KSF process.
Communication
As the Clinical Accountable Lead for the service, it is essential the Nurse Consultant demonstrates the ability to communicate treatment plans clearly and precisely with colleagues in verbal and written formats across a range of professional and organisational boundaries.
Patient communication will include gaining informed verbal or written consent for all assessment and treatment including gaining consent for non-invasive and invasive procedures within Trust policies.
Communication will include discussing information relating to diagnosis, prognosis, physical and functional recovery and lifestyle adjustments to patients and their relatives as well as providing an advocacy role.
Regular and spontaneous use of verbal and non-verbal communication tools to discuss highly complex information about underlying influences, prognosis, and progression of rehabilitation and treatment programmes with patient or carer.
The post holder will demonstrate highly developed communication skills in motivating, negotiating, counselling, training, empathising and reassuring and will maintain accurate comprehensive and up to date documentation, in line with legal and professional standards of practice.
To work collaboratively with line managers and service leads across all organisations to ensure that positive links are established and maintained to develop the skills and working practices of all services involved.
The post holder will establish and maintain key working relationships with the following:
Clinical staff within the Virtual Ward; nursing, therapy, support and admin staff.
Clinicians within referring acute hospitals for the step-down pathway and Clinicians within the community for the step-up pathway.
Patients, carers and their families.
Diagnostic providers.
Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians.
Community nursing teams inclusive of specialist nursing functions.
Service Director/ Director of Nursing and senior leadership team.
CHS Medical Director & Clinical Director.
Corporate support services.
Safeguarding Team.
GPs/Community Adult Health Services.
Acute Services.
The voluntary Sector.
Senior leads within the Trust.
Executive Directors.
System partnership leads.
Integrated Care Board members/teams.
Higher Education Institutes.
Research & Development Activity
The post holder will:
Monitor standards and quality of care against the national guidelines and national service frameworks, including design and evaluation of multi-professional systems of audit, ensuring clinical excellence.
To lead on the Virtual Ward evaluation process, ensuring that the patients voice is heard, and that feedback is acted upon.
Develop evidence-based nursing standards, ensure compliance with these standards, and provide a framework for changing practice.
Lead the development of effective processes for People and Public Involvement and coproduction with service users when developing services and carrying out research and evaluation.
Collaborate with the organisations research and development team and identify, lead, and implement research projects.
To encourage and support staff to undertake research activities, including quality improvement projects, in order to support service improvements.
Develop databases for the collation of information to allow audit and research.
Understand the need for rigorous, systematic assessment of research before applying it to practice.
Contribute through professional organisations national and international developments in best practice.
