Job responsibilities
Key Working Relationships:
Consultant Cardiologists, Physicians and multidisciplinary teams within secondary care.
Consultant Nurse in Heart Failure Services and Cardiac Rehabilitation.
Clinical Nurse Specialists in Cardiac Rehabilitation/ Heart Failure in other ABUHB localities
Primary Care teams
LHB Primary Care development team
Cardiac Rehabilitation / Heart Failure Team
Duties and Responsibilities
Clinical
- In liaison with Consultant Nurse, Cardiologists and General Physicians maintain responsibility and accountability for all elements of the heart failure services.
- Liaise with the multi-disciplinary team and put systems in place to ensure patient safety throughout the phases of Care.
- Maintain an independent clinical caseload of diverse cardiac patients by providing nurse led cardiology outpatient clinics.
- Make professionally autonomous decisions on patients presenting with complex undifferentiated, undiagnosed problems, making use of skills in history taking, physical examination, problem solving and clinical decision making to establish diagnosis and management plan.
- Instigate necessary invasive and non-invasive diagnostic tests or investigations and interpret findings.
- Clinical skills- clinical patient assessment, risk factor identification and management, examination of heart sounds, examination of lung fields, chest pain assessment and referral to appropriate diagnostic tests. Venepuncture. Interpreting and addressing blood results.
- Where the post holder is an independent prescriber, to prescribe safe, effective, and appropriate medication as defined by current legislative framework
- Demonstrate safe, clinical decision-making and expert care.
- Accept direct referrals and maintain responsibility for the process of patient referral for patients with heart failure in both inpatient and cardiology outpatient settings.
- Refer directly to consultant cardiologists, clinicians, colleagues in tertiary care and other services / agencies as appropriate.
- Carry out risk stratification on patients, ensuring expert assessment and interpretation of findings.
- Work as an independent practitioner, using evidence-based skills and translates expert knowledge into individualized patient care.
- Exercise a high degree of professional autonomy to assist with complex clinical decision making and provide expert advice on request.
Work in partnership with members of the multi-disciplinary team, Local Health Boards and Primary Care Teams in providing expert advice to meet patient needs.
Develop and implement strategies for taking forward patient care using an innovative approach.
Facilitate practice, based on advances in cardiology research and sound evidence.
Maintain patient information systems and up-to-date patient records, including accurate correspondence to primary, secondary and tertiary care.
Act in an advisory capacity for other health professionals involved with patient care requiring expert advice.
Communicate highly sensitive and complex information to patients and their relatives including diagnostic results, future management and risk, ensuring they understand the information given.
Provide a counseling/advice service for patients and relatives addressing distressing and emotional circumstances in a sensitive manner.
Ensure appropriate and effective communication between patients and all those involved with their care.
Provide patients families/carers with tailored education, advice and support.
Advise and support patients on lifestyle changes that would be advantageous to their health.
Encourage patients and their carers as appropriate to be actively involved in managing and monitoring their own care.
Planning and Organisational Tasks/Duties
Take overall responsibility for the operational management, service delivery and service development of the heart failure nursing service. Line manager for Band 7 Heart failure nurses. Ensure the continued development of nurse led services, producing policies, protocols and guidelines specific to the area of responsibility.
Contribute to the ongoing modernization and redesign of cardiac services, supporting the reporting of key performance indicators in line with National Policy, considering their impact and strategies for implementation.
Provide clinical leadership to the multidisciplinary cardiac rehabilitation and heart failure team.
Establish and maintain networking and negotiating relationships with all relevant professionals, agencies and organizations at national, all Wales and local level.
Be aware of and contribute to the commissioning of heart failure services.
Develop and set up new services and participate in initiatives to improve existing services
Responsible for resource management and budget control within management area.
Organize own workload and that of others, taking into account the unpredictable nature of the role, by managing, supporting and providing guidance to any grade of staff in area of responsibility.
Communicates information regarding service provision to senior managers including report writing, transcribing minutes and business case development
Responsible for the development and implementation of departmental policies.
Maintain methods of monitoring workload, patient activity, staffing levels, skill mix and personal files, ensuring that action is taken to prevent patient care being compromised.
Undertake workforce planning including recruitment and retention.
Deal with complaints in accordance with the agreed policy reporting and investigating them as required.
Responsible for the maintenance, repair, safe use and testing of equipment and stock control.
Provide clinical and professional leadership, advice on care management and educational support for all clinical nurse specialists and other members of the multidisciplinary team.
Work with colleagues from all disciplines across the Health Board to enable the development of expert knowledge and appropriate skills, ensuring that individuals are equipped for caring of cardiac patients.
Identify the educational needs of staff, contributing to the development of an annual training needs analysis, aligned to the goals of Cardiac care.
Identify and contribute to planning and implementation of teaching opportunities for the dissemination of expert knowledge.
Take the initiative regarding: clinical supervision, study days, seminars, and shadow experiences for a range of health care staff from primary and secondary care.
In conjunction with senior members of the multi-disciplinary team maintain regular education sessions.
Support personal development by conducting regular appraisals for individuals in line with the knowledge and skills framework.
To mentor and support other nurses in developing and maintaining clinical skills
Information resources
Utilise innovative ways to gather, consolidate and share information, acting as a resource across the organisation.
Provide highly specialist clinical advice and support to primary care teams in regard to the management of often highly complex cardiac patients
Prepare quarterly activity reports for the Nurse Consultant
Maintain robust nursing documentation in accordance with NMC Standards for Record Keeping and Clinical Governance.
Establish and provide an effective line of communication for any enquiries regarding cardiac rehabilitation services.
Develop systems of standardised documentation in collaboration with other health and social care professionals to maintain accurate and detailed patient records in line with the principles of the unified assessment process and Caldicott principles.
Develop effective monitoring and evaluation systems to assess the effectiveness of cardiac rehabilitation/nurse led heart failure clinics which includes patient and carer satisfaction surveys.
Prepare written and verbal reports in line with the HB requirements.
Support primary care based chronic disease registers, ensuring compliance with data protection and Caldicott requirements.
Maintain databases of information as appropriate and in line with data protection requirements.
You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click Apply now to view in Trac
