Senior Children's Palliative Care NurseNHS

Job summary

Join our dynamic team at Keech Hospice as a Senior Childrens Palliative Care Nurse and contribute to providing high quality care to children and their families across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes. We are currently seeking an enthusiastic and flexible experienced Childrens Nurse who is keen to expand their skills by joining our friendly symptom management team and supporting patients both in the home and at the hospice.

Main duties of the job

• Assessing and delivering a holistic family-centred approach, ensuring our patients and their families receive the care they deserve
• Supporting families with complex healthcare decisions
• Provide high quality palliative and end of life care following symptom management plans
• Be an advocate for childrens and families, promoting empowerment
• To plan, deliver and evaluate care plans taking in to account the child and families needs
• Participate on the 24/7 on call rota for children receiving end of life care at home

Job description

• To assess, plan, implement, deliver and evaluate holistic family centred care taking into account the child and familys physical, social, psychological and spiritual needs. This may take place in a range of settings
• Completion of clinical care plans to support efficient delivery of care and contribute to the development of individualised Symptom Management Plans.
• To use clinical judgement and autonomous decision making about nursing care requirements to address the needs of children and young people, which are complex and have potential to change
• To be involved in and support all staff in providing high quality palliative and end of life care, and bereavement support, ensuring safe delivery where care is delegated
• To manage and prioritise own workload, constantly reassessing to accommodate demands for crisis intervention and ensure ongoing continuity of the service
• To work within designated locality team and the wider childrens service to establish and maintain effective communication processes with children, young people and their families, colleagues and the broader multi disciplinary team, internally and externally.
• Ensure timely and appropriate referral to relevant services to enhance the care of the child and family
• To be actively involved in the sharing of knowledge with families and all those who care for the child in a range of settings.
• To encourage parental participation in care and to demonstrate, instruct and supervise parents/carers in nursing procedures, which may be safely delegated to them.
• Enabling families to reach their maximum potential for health and well being
• To be able to act as an advocate, promoting empowerment as opposed to dependence, for children and families as appropriate, facilitating informed choice and opportunity.This includes initiating and actively supporting the child/young person/family with Advance Care Planning and decisions regarding care
• To be able to respond to the demands of the family in a flexible way; workload is delegated within the team to maintain a healthy work/life balance in accordance with the working time directive.
• Take a lead role in planning discharges from hospice or hospital to the community or hospice settings so that plans are comprehensive and effective, ensuring that parallel planning takes place if a child is deemed to be nearing end of life
• Ensure all statutory processes following a childs death are completed efficiently and participate in the Child Death Review process
• Provide professional and managerial leadership and maintain an awareness of the needs of colleagues, ensuring they are supported to deliver the requirements of their roles.
• Participate in staff support sessions
• Undertake annual appraisals of childrens service staff, identifying training needs and establishing and monitoring objectives.
• Work with individual staff members to encourage personal and professional growth and development.
• Take reasonable care of the health and safety of yourself and other persons who may be affected by your acts or omissions at work and cooperate with the Hospice to ensure that statutory and departmental regulations are adhered to.
• Ensure comprehensive, accurate and up to date written and electronic record keeping is maintained in line with legislation and organisational standards.
• Participate in external teaching, training and delivery of education where appropriate.
• Ensure adequate and appropriate resourcing of the service including; - safe staffing levels to meet the flexible needs of service delivery - effectiveness of equipment in use - building and maintenance - faults must reported in a timely way
• To participate in an On Call Rota system, which ensures the team are responsive to families at all times, when a child is on the Red caseload.
• In exceptional circumstances the on call nurse may be required to go into the hospice to support a childs care or in the event of staff sickness where no other staffing can be sourced
• Participate in recruitment and development of Childrens services staff.
• Participate in regular psychosocial and multi-professional meetings with acute services.

About us

Keech Hospice provides free specialist palliative and end of life care for people of all ages. We support adults in Bedfordshire. Children and their families in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Milton Keynes. At home, in hospice, or wherever were needed. As a teaching hospice, our exceptional people, training, and facilities are helping local communities to live and die well.