Infection Prevention and Control Nurse in London

At Community Hospice, everything we do starts with compassion, dignity, and partnership. We believe that every person in our community deserves exceptional, safe, and person-centred care wherever they call home. That’s why we’re working with London Borough of Bexley to recruit an experienced, values-driven Infection Prevention & Control (IPC) Nurse to join us, to help strengthen and support care across the borough.

This isn’t just an IPC role. It’s an opportunity to empower others, protect some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and work at the heart of a collaborative, forward-thinking integrated care system. You’ll use your specialist expertise to support care homes and community settings, build confidence and skills in the social care workforce, and promote safe, high-quality practice that improves outcomes for residents and patients.

Main duties of the job:

• Acting as a key IPC liaison between Public Health Bexley and community-based care providers.
• Leading IPC training needs analysis and supporting organisations to grow their knowledge, skills and resilience.
• Providing expert assessment, audits, and practical support to strengthen IPC practice and reduce infection risks.
• Championing high standards, dignity, safety and quality across all care environments.
• Building strong, respectful relationships with colleagues across health, social care, voluntary and private sectors.

If you are a NMC Registered Nurse with a specialist IPC qualification motivated by making care safer, fairer and better for everyone and you want to use your expertise to make a meaningful difference across our community we’d love to hear from you.

About us:

At Community Hospice, we believe in working together, learning together and caring together. You’ll be supported with supervision, ongoing professional development and opportunities to shape system-wide improvements across SEL ICS. You’ll join a team that is direct, proactive and uplifting. We are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and to creating a workplace where everyone feels they belong.

Job responsibilities:

• Providing infection prevention and control support and leadership to community settings in Bexley.
• Act as IPC liaison between Public Health Teams in Bexley and Community based Health and Social Care providers.
• Conduct training needs analysis and map quality and content of existing education provision.
• Undertake IPC risk assessment and empower and support providers to develop appropriate action plans for specific issues or pathogens.
• Signpost to appropriate agencies to reduce the risk of infection and control outbreaks.
• Facilitate delivery of IPC training as required to care settings, multidisciplinary team members and other clinical professionals as required.
• Develop, deliver and facilitate a care homes IPC leads or Champions programme.
• Quality Improvement for care environments and IPC practice.
• Contribute to the development and implementation of local models of care, with agreed protocols, reflecting best practice and responding to local needs, within and across disciplines.
• Provide quality assurance through IPC expert assessment of care homes level of IPC provision and compliance through a programme of audit, walkabouts and clinical visits; report any concerns about care through appropriate governance structures.
• Provide IPC expert advice and evaluation of providers IPC compliance reporting to the Bexley Public Health Governance forums.
• Empower providers to develop their IPC standards and practice to strengthen and improve resident/patient outcomes, working with multi-agency system wide partners where appropriate.
• Work to ensure that patient/resident dignity is respected at all times, including acting as the patients advocate.
• Contribute to service development and evaluations as required.
• Supporting and coordinating outbreak response within community settings.
• Instigate meetings with internal and external stakeholders to investigate and manage outbreaks of infections.
• Developing positive working relations with colleagues across our system, in Social Care, Primary Healthcare, Private and not-for profit sectors as well as statutory services.
• Promoting and practicing excellent communication skills with colleagues and stakeholders.
• Raising the profile of IPC in care homes and other relevant community settings and strengthening multi-disciplinary working in line with the ICB integrated care networks and the associated locally enhanced services to support care settings.
• Supporting complex hospital discharges where infection is a key contributor to delays.
• Collect and collate data and write reports as required to support ongoing delivery of this program of work.
• Participate in appropriate IPC and social care forums in order to disseminate and share good practice and ensure service development.

Further information:

• To be familiar with and adhere to all Hospice (and relevant Care Homes, Trust and Community) policies and procedures.
• You must at all times respect confidentiality and in particular the confidentiality of all personal data stored, in line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act.
• You must be aware of and adhere to individual responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act and identify and report, as necessary, any untoward accident, incident or potentially hazardous environment.
• This job description is intended as an outline of the general areas of activity and will be amended from time to time in the light of the changing needs of the organisation.