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Job summary

Main area
Heart, Lung, critical care clinical group
Grade
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
196-NM11543
Employer
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
Royal Brompton hospital
Town
London
Salary
£58,698 - £65,095 p.a. inclusive of HCA
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
07/05/2024 23:59

Employer heading

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust logo

Matron/Lead for older people and complex care

NHS AfC: Band 8a

Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.

Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.

Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions. 

Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.

In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.

We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.

Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.

The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.

We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.



Job overview

We have an exciting opportunity for a senior healthcare professional to become the Matron/Lead to delivery our complex care agenda, to include older people, vulnerabilities, complex care needs pre and post procedures, discharge, family interaction and onward care. The role will ensure our staff have the specific knowledge and skills to care for this group of patients and their families.

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced senior nurse/AHP with a passion for quality improvement, service development and education to lead our pathway transformation for older people and complex care across the HLCC. This exciting new role is part of the complex care team that will lead on optimising pathways for older people and complex care. The role will lead on and support on complex discharge and will ensure that the principles of POPs that have grown and developed at GSTT can be upscaled across the clinical group.

Closing Date: 7th May 2024 at Midnight 

Proposed Interview Date: 15 May 2024

Main duties of the job

The post holder will lead the local implementation of the older persons pathway for patients having cardiology procedures and cardiac surgery from preadmission to post discharge across all sites of the Heart, Lung and Critical Care Clinical Group.

The candidate will have passion and a vision that they can effectively communicate with the whole multidisciplinary team as well as the practical ambition to make a difference to the experiences of our patients.

The successful applicant will demonstrate a high level of enthusiasm, commitment and leadership that will support the development of aspirant nurses within the clinical group. They will have excellent clinical skills, recent experience, and a background knowledge of oncology nursing as well as a robust level of IT literacy.

Working for our organisation

Our Heart, Lung & Critical Care Clinical Group has a breadth of enthusiastic and motivated staff, who are spread over 4 sites (Harefield, Royal Brompton, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals). There is strong clinical leadership and pride ourselves on giving high quality care.

The Clinical Group is a specialty group caring for patients with Cardiovascular and Lung diseases, including congenital, inherited, newly diagnosed, transplantation, life changing treatment pathways and long-standing disease pathways. Patients come from all over the country with a huge number form the Southeast of England. We care for patients prior to hospital admission, hospital stay, preparation for discharge home or new accommodation and follow up. Our patients as with all specialties are getting older and this brings different challenges to our clinical staff.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will work closely with staff of all professional backgrounds across the clinical group to develop and optimise pathways for older people to ensure safe care for complex patients undergoing procedures across the Heart, Lung, Critical care clinical group from referral and pre assessment to post discharge.  The post holder will lead the discharge and complex discharge teams for the clinical group.

Pathways for older people and complex care

The role will lead on improving pathways for older and complex patients undergoing surgery and cardiology procedures by ensuring that patients with complex care needs whether that be due to age, or other factors are appropriately identified early, assessed and referred to the appropriate teams for review.

The post holder will lead on: -

  • The development of strategies to identify complex needs early in the pathway.
  • To ensure that the development of pathways is done in coproduction with patients.
  • To liaise and work with all pre assessment services, in patient areas and discharge teams to develop standards and governance process for any new service.
  • To work with the Perioperative medicine for Older People undergoing Surgery (POPS) Team to upscale the POP’s service across the HLCC.
  • To improve the identification of older people with complex needs, supporting ward staff with the clinical assessment and management of diverse needs of older patients and encouraging them to proactively liaise and refer to other members of the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) as appropriate.
  • To lead on the development, monitoring and review of care plans for older patients with complex needs e.g., dementia, history of falls. To lead on planning, development, delivery, and evaluation of training for ward staff and other members of the team to support provision of quality client-centred services for our older patients and those with complex discharge, within HLCC and Trust wide. To be responsible for the reporting of relevant data internally within HLCC and the Trust as well as

Lead for discharge and complex discharge

In addition to leading on the older persons pathway transformation work the post holder will act as the lead for discharge & complex discharge for Heart Lung & Critical Care (HLCC) clinical group – provide strategic planning, development and implementation of National guidance, e.g., National Service Framework for Older People, and lead on delivering related Trust strategies across the clinical group.

The post holder will lead on: -

  • Developing a structure to ensure that for, elective pathways, that discharge is discussed and planned at pre-admission so that post procedure the patients & families are ready for discharge, aware of ongoing care they may be required and are discharged with all the required information and medication in a timely way.
  • Creating a process to ensure that, for urgent and emergency pathways there is a process to plan discharge arrangements as soon as is practical after admission.
  • Creating a resource to identify efficient discharge planning ensuring patients & families know when patients’ have a proposed discharge date, plan and discharge requirements for ongoing care.
  • Planning specific service improvement such as morning discharge alongside matrons and ward staff.
  • Development projects, initiatives and liaising with a wide range of staff internally and externally, taking responsibility for outcomes, reporting and assurance.
  • To co-produce Trust policy and deliver locally across all clinical areas within the HLCC clinical group.
  • To take responsibility for the co-ordination of complex discharges, to support patient flow, across all sites within HLCC; this will be achieved by leading and managing the services for complex discharge including NHS continuing health care co-ordination, working with colleagues in complex discharge, occupational therapy, welfare rights, ward discharge nurses and the lead for adult safeguarding as well as linking with external partners.
  • To lead regular audit of current practice and development and implementation of recommendations. It will include collation of service data for the clinical group and development of dashboard data. To lead the HLCC discharge improvement group meeting, a group of multi professional staff from across the clinical group, to deliver quality improvement activities to improve discharge of patients.

Person specification

Professional registration

Essential criteria
  • Eg NMC DipCOTSROT
  • Extensive Experience at senior healthcare level
  • Extensive clinical experience

Experience and knowledge

Essential criteria
  • Experience of working in older peoples services
  • Experience of setting up services and initiatives
  • Experience of development of policies, guidelines and protocols
Desirable criteria
  • Ability to work across departments
  • Experience in project management
  • Experience in QI methodology

Education

Essential criteria
  • Degree level qualification
  • MSc in relevant subject or working towards or significant relevant experience
Desirable criteria
  • Leadership qualification or ability to demonstrate relevant experience

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Timewise helps businesses to attract and develop the best talent through flexible working.Care quality commission - GoodDisability confident employer

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Cathy Walters
Job title
Head of Nursing for complex care
Email address
[email protected]
Additional information

Alternatively contact Head of Nursing for complex care Carol McCoskery [email protected]