Band 7 Clinical Nurse Specialist-Macmillan Community Palliative Care

Job summary

1 x 22.5hrs

The Solihull Macmillan Community Specialist Palliative Care Team works closely with the wider MDT based at the Marie Curie Hospice, giving the team access to specialist medical advice, Hospice at Home and other hospice services. It is a supportive, well-connected service with a strong focus on helping patients remain at home where possible and ensuring they receive the right level of palliative care at the right time.

We are looking for an experienced Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) who can provide visible, compassionate leadership while remaining clinically credible and involved in patient care. You will lead and support the CNS team, manage a small clinical caseload to keep your clinical skills current, and work closely with GPs, district nurses, hospice colleagues and wider community services.

This is an opportunity for someone who wants to help shape the future of community palliative care in Solihull. The role includes developing pathways, strengthening education and support for generalist teams, and ensuring specialist skills remain focused where they add most value, including complex symptoms, rapid deterioration, difficult decision-making and significant patient or family distress.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will provide expert, autonomous specialist palliative care to patients with complex needs in their own homes and community settings. This will include holistic assessment, complex symptom management advice, advance care planning, supporting patients and families through uncertainty and deterioration, and coordinating care across the multidisciplinary team.

Alongside a small clinical caseload, they will provide day-to-day leadership for the Community Palliative Care CNS team. They will support staff with complex cases, triage and prioritise referrals, oversee workload and staffing, keep communication clear across the team and wider MDT, and contribute to appraisal, supervision and staff development.

They will lead and support service improvement, including reviewing referral pathways, developing standards and guidance, learning from incidents and feedback, and contributing to audit, quality improvement and evidence-based practice. They will also provide formal and informal education to colleagues across community services, helping generalist teams recognise palliative needs, plan ahead and know when specialist support is required.

We are looking for someone calm, approachable and clinically experienced, who can manage competing priorities, make sound decisions and lead change without losing sight of patients, families or the team.

About us

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust strives to have an inclusive culture where everyone feels like they belong, can thrive, knows that they add value and feels valued. We do this by developing compassionate and culturally competent leaders, being values driven in all that we do and by creating a welcoming and inclusive workplace that thrives on the diversity of our people. As such we want to attract and recruit talented individuals from all backgrounds, and for each of you to feel supported for the diversity you bring, to achieve your full potential. For those staff with a disability, including physical disability, long term health condition, mental health or neurodiverse condition, this also means being committed to making reasonable adjustments needed for you to carry out your role.

Job responsibilities

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential

• * Registered Adult / Child Nurse on the NMC Register (Field dependent upon role)
• * Evidence of post registration CPD/Post registration qualification in (appropriate area of speciality or professional knowledge supplemented by specialist experience and short courses to degree / masters level equivalent FHEQ Level 6 /7
• * Recognised mentorship course

Desirable

• * To have or working towards a MSc/ Masters qualification
• * To have or working towards advanced health assessment module -- where applicable to the role
• * Non -- Medical Prescriber/ willingness to undertake - where applicable to the role

Experience

Essential

• * Evidence and ability to revalidate as required by the NMC
• * Significant years post registration experience as a Clinical Nurse Specialist at B6 or above in defined or associated speciality Extensive experience of working autonomously
• at a specialist level
• * Evidence of achievements and career development in current post and of on-going professional development/competence.
• * Demonstrate expert knowledge underpinned by theory and CPD relevant to speciality.
• * Experience and enthusiasm for developing educational programmes and teaching / assessing and supervising others in a clinical setting.
• * Working in a multi-disciplinary and cross agency work environment.
• * Experience of patient service user advocacy role
• * Can demonstrate expert nursing knowledge with an ability to assess,plan, implement and evaluate specialist care delivered to patients and give advice and information to
• patients / relatives/ care staff
• * Awareness of current relevant NHS policy context relating to the speciality
• * Has understanding / experience of the principles of Safeguarding
• * Knowledge of corporate and clinical governance

Desirable

• * Experience of delivering change management both personally and as a facilitator
• * Experience in service development Awareness of current research related to the speciality
• * Awareness of current research related to the speciality