Practice Nurse

Job summary

Join Our Friendly and Supportive Practice Team

We are looking for a caring, motivated, and enthusiastic General Practice Nurse to join our welcoming team. Whether you are an experienced Practice Nurse or a Registered Nurse looking to begin your career in primary care, we would love to hear from you.

At Whitley House Surgery, we are committed to providing high-quality, patient-centred care in a supportive and collaborative environment. We value continuous learning and will provide the training, mentorship, and development opportunities needed to help you succeed. We are a large well-regarded training practice with 14,600 registered patients based in a single site in the centre of Chelmsford and are part of Chelmsford City Health Primary Care Network comprising 43,000 patients

The clinical system we use is SystmOne. The surgery has recently been fully refurbished and provides a nice, high spec environment for both patients and staff.

Main duties of the job

About the Role

As a General Practice Nurse, you will play a key role in delivering safe, effective, and compassionate nursing care to our patient population. Working alongside GPs, Advanced Clinical Practitioners, Healthcare Assistants, and our wider multidisciplinary team, you will contribute to health promotion, chronic disease management, preventative care, and treatment services.Your responsibilities will include:

• Delivering cervical screening and immunisations (or willingness to undertake training).
• Supporting patients with long-term conditions such as diabetes, asthma, COPD, and hypertension (or willingness to undertake training).
• Providing wound care, dressings, and removal of sutures/clips.
• Performing health checks and NHS Health Checks.
• Administering vaccinations and travel health services (training available where required).
• Undertaking chronic disease reviews within your level of competence.
• Warfarin management
• ECGs
• Promoting healthy lifestyles and supporting patients with self-management.
• Maintaining accurate clinical records using SystmOne.
• Participating in infection prevention and control, safeguarding, and quality improvement activities.
• Prioritise health problems and intervene appropriately to assist the patient in complex urgent or emergency situations, including initiation of effective emergency care

About us

Join Our Friendly and Supportive Practice Team

We are looking for a caring, motivated, and enthusiastic General Practice Nurse to join our welcoming team. Whether you are an experienced Practice Nurse or a Registered Nurse looking to begin your career in primary care, we would love to hear from you. Our current nursing team comprises a Lead Nurse, 2 Registered Adult Nurses & 3 Healthcare Assistants.

At Whitley House Surgery, we are committed to providing high-quality, patient-centred care in a supportive and collaborative environment. We value continuous learning and will provide the training, mentorship, and development opportunities needed to help you succeed. We are a large well-regarded training practice with 14,600 registered patients based in a single site in the centre of Chelmsford and are part of Chelmsford City Health Primary Care Network comprising 43,000 patients

The clinical system we use is SystmOne. The surgery has recently been fully refurbished and provides a nice, high spec environment for both patients and staff.

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

Clinical practice

• Assess and care for patients presenting with uncomplicated wounds
• Support and advise women requesting information relating to family planning needs
• Support and manage health needs of women presenting for cervical cytology consultations
• Implement and participate in vaccination and immunisation programmes for both adults and children
• Support patients to adopt health promotion strategies that promote patients to live healthily, and encourage principles of self-care
• Assess, plan, develop, implement and evaluate programmes to promote health and wellbeing, and prevent adverse effects on health and well-being
• Implement and evaluate individual treatment plans for patients with a known long-term condition
• Identify, and manage as appropriate, treatment plans for patients at risk of developing a long-term condition
• Prioritise health problems and intervene appropriately to assist the patient in complex urgent or emergency situations, including initiation of effective emergency care
• Deliver opportunistic health promotion using opportunities such as new-patient medicals

• Utilise and demonstrate sensitive communication styles, to ensure patients are fully informed and consent of treatment
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers, recognising the need for alternative methods of communication to overcome different levels of understanding, cultural background and preferred ways of communicating
• Utilise communication skills to support patients to adhere to prescribed treatment regimens
• Anticipate barriers to communication and take action to improve communication
• Maintain effective communication with individuals and groups within the practice environment and with external stakeholders
• Act as an advocate when representing the patients and colleagues viewpoints to others
• Apply Caldicott principles when handling patient data
• Communicate effectively with members of the MDT

• Recognise and work within own competence and professional code of conduct asregulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)

• Produce accurate, contemporaneous and complete records of patient consultation, consistent with legislation, policies and procedures
• Prioritise, organise and manage own workload in a manner that maintains and promotes quality
• Deliver care according to the NSF and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence(NICE) guidelines and evidence-based care
• Assess effectiveness of care delivery through self and peer review, benchmarking and formal evaluation
• Participate in the maintenance of quality governance systems and processes across the organisation and its activities
• Utilise the audit cycle as a means of evaluating the quality of the work of self and the team, implementing improvements where required
• In partnership with other clinical teams, collaborate on improving the quality of healthcare, responding to local and national policies and initiatives as appropriate
• Evaluate the patients response to health care provision and the effectiveness of care
• Support and participate in shared learning across the practice and wider organisation
• Participate in the management, review and identify learning from patient complaints, clinical incidents and near-miss events utilising a structured framework (e.g. root-cause analysis)
• Participate in the performance monitoring review of the team, providing feedback as appropriate
• Understand and apply legal policy that supports the identification of vulnerable and abused children and adults, being aware of statutory child/vulnerable adult health procedure and local guidance
• Work within policies relating to domestic violence, vulnerable adults, substance abuse and addictive behaviour, and refer as appropriate

• Take responsibility for own development, learning and performance including participating in clinical supervision and acting as a positive role model
• Support the development of others in order to maximise potential
• Actively promote the workplace as a learning environment, encouraging everyone to learn from each other and from external good practice
• Encourage others to make realistic self-assessment of their application of knowledge and skills, challenging complacency and actions that are not in the interest of the public and/or users of services
• Participate in planning and implementing changes within the area of care and responsibility
• Work with other nurses and practice team to ensure sufficient staff of appropriate ability, quality and skill mix are available to meet the needs of patients
• Contribute and participate in the development of local guidelines, protocols and standards
• Participate in the engagement of practice-based commissioning or similar initiatives
• Critically evaluate and review innovations and developments that are relevant to own practice
• Keep up-to-date with new developments locally and nationally identifying those that will enhance the teams work
• Ensure awareness of sources of support and guidance (e.g. patient advice and liaison service PALS) and provide information in an acceptable format to all patients, recognising any difficulties and referring where appropriate

• Understand own role and scope in the organisation and identify how this may develop over time
• Work as an effective and responsible team member, supporting others and exploring the mechanisms to develop new ways of working
• Delegate clearly and appropriately, adopting the principles of safe practice and assessment of competence of those taking on delegated duties
• Ensure clear understanding and utilisation of referral mechanisms within the practice
• Accept delegation from other nurses, prioritise own workload and ensure effective time management strategies are embedded in own practice
• Work effectively with others to clearly define values, direction and policies impacting upon care delivery
• Participate in team activities that create opportunities to improve patient care
• Participate in and support local projects as agreed with the practice management team

• Manage and assess risk within the areas of responsibility, ensuring adequate measures are in place to protect staff and patients
• Monitor work areas and practices to ensure they are safe and free from hazards and conform to health, safety and security legislation, policies, procedures and guidelines
• Ensure safe storage, rotation and disposal of vaccines and drugs is undertaken. Where appropriate, oversee the monitoring, stock control and documentation of controlled drug usage according to legal requirements
• Undertake mandatory and statutory training
• Apply infection control measures within the practice according to local and national guidelines
• Apply policies that reduce environmental health risks, are culturally sensitive and increase access to health care for all

• Use technology as an aid to management in planning, implementation and monitoring, presenting and communicating information
• Review and process data using accurate Read codes and templates about patients in order to ensure easy and accurate retrieval for monitoring and audit processes
• Understand own and others responsibility to the individual organisation regarding the Freedom of Information Act
• Collate, analyse and present clinical data and information to the team using appropriate charts and/or graphs to enhance care

• Disseminate learning and information gained to other team members in order to share good practice and inform others about current and future developments
• Assess own learning needs and undertake learning as appropriate
• Make effective use of learning opportunities within and outside the workplace, evaluating their effectiveness and feeding back relevant information
• Provide an educational role to patients, carers, families and colleagues in an environment that facilitates learning

• Identify patterns of discrimination, take action to overcome this, and promote diversity and quality of opportunity
• Enable others to promote equality and diversity in a non-discriminatory culture
• Support people who need assistance in exercising their rights
• Monitor and evaluate adherence to local chaperoning policies
• Act as a role model in good practice relating to equality and diversity
• Accept the rights of individuals to choose their care providers, participate in care and refuse care. Assist patients from marginalised groups to access quality care

Person specification

Experience

Essential

• Knowledge of needs of patients with long-term conditions.
• Wound care management.
• Aware of accountability of own role and other roles in a nurse led service.
• Knowledge of health promotion strategies.
• Administration of injections eg SC, IM.
• Awareness of clinical governance issues in primary care.
• Communication skills, both written and verbal.
• IT skills.
• Self-directed practitioner.
• Highly motivated.
• Flexibility.
• Enthusiasm.
• Team player.
• Ability to work across organisations and with an MDT approach.

Desirable

• Experience of working in a GP setting.
• Experience of running / supporting INR clinics - testing and warfarin dosing.
• Chronic disease management (recognised certificate) in e.g. Asthma, COPD, CHD, Diabetes.
• Travel consultation/immunisations experience.

Qualifications

Essential

• Registered Adult Nurse - active on NMC Register

Desirable

• Clinical skills training in cervical cytology, immunisation and vaccination, ear care, family planning and health checks (If clinical skills not held, must show willingness to undergo training to acquire these skills)