NursingNetUK

Job overview

Working Full time : 37.5  hours per week

This is an exciting opportunity for a clinical Nurse Specialist to be in a leading role delivering high quality care and providing support to patients and their families and helping to develop and expand our skin services  based within the Dermatology team at The Countess of Chester Hospital.

Main duties of the job

• To work as a specialist, autonomous practitioner and use expert clinical decision making skills.
• To ensure that all requirements for continuing professional development are met and to keep abreast of new advances in the field of Dermatology as appropriate. Attend wards/departments to work closely with the MDT to carryout consultations and treatments. 
• Promote and develop the specialist advisory and supportive role of a Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) in Dermatology demonstrating specialist and advanced clinical skills and knowledge base supported by post registration education and qualification.
• To facilitate early discharge planning enabling appropriate arrangements to be in place for patients leaving hospital, making referrals and providing information to community services, as required, achieving a safe and timely discharge from hospital.
• Organises personal workload to ensure that it reflects the core components of the Clinical Nurse Specialist role i.e. clinical, management, research and education.
• Develops excellent communication skills to facilitate discussion of complex, sensitive and emotive issues around Dermatology, disease management, recurrence/progressive disease and prognosis.
• Support and empower patients, their relatives and carers, to participate in decision making concerning their care, providing information on a range of specialist care and services.

Working for our organisation

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides services to West Cheshire and to Welsh patients covered by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. The Trust works collaboratively within the wider Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership. Its services are provided from three locations:

• The Countess of Chester Hospital: providing 438 general and acute beds.
• Ellesmere Port Hospital: providing 56 beds as a rehabilitation, intermediate and outpatient facility.
• Tarporley War Memorial Hospital: a base for community services which serve the local rural population.

The Trust employs over 6258 staff (headcount) which includes temporary bank staff and provides acute emergency and elective services, primary care direct access services and obstetric services to a population of approximately 407,000. This includes 357,000 residents in Chester and West Cheshire which includes Ellesmere Port and Neston as well as the Deeside area of Flintshire which has a population of approximately 50,000.

The Trust is a busy district general hospital and in 2022/2023, there were more than 503,342 patient attendances (inpatient, outpatient and diagnostic) ranging from a simple outpatient appointment to major cancer surgery. This is an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to the previous year when there were 494,387 patient attendances.