Primary Care Dementia Nurse Specialist London

Job summary

The Dementia Clinical Nurse Specialist service in Southwark provides comprehensive clinical holistic assessment, review, and support for people, and their carers, who are living with a diagnosis of dementia. The nurse led service primarily offer home based assessments to support planning of care for people living with dementia in the community to stay living at home. To achieve this, we work closely with primary care, social care, and voluntary sector organisations in the borough to foster positive networks and co-working across the borough. Building and strengthening these relationships is a key part of this role, and this is done through network meetings, MDTs, and co-location of services. Alongside this; using knowledge as specialist nurses we promote health and wellness, as well as giving dementia education to other health professionals, social care, and voluntary organisations. We provide expert clinical guidance to our partner organisations and consult as required. South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust currently has two Dementia CNS services, based in Lewisham and Southwark, and the services work closely to ensure a parity of care and access across the two boroughs. The provision is very small so the two are joined and have shared meetings on the Lewisham site.

Main duties of the job

• Undertake holistic clinical assessment of individuals living with dementia, provide expert advice and support to these individuals, whilst maintaining a small short-term caseload of patients with dementia who may need follow up visits to achieve desired outcomes.
• To work with health, social, and voluntary services, and engage with the wider Southwark community, to develop and maintain working relationships and cohesive care pathways across the borough for the defined patient group.
• To give expert advice, training and community engagement on dementia. This will relate to general overview of dementia, living and living well with a diagnosis, and best practice. The aim of this engagement is to upskill professionals coming into contact with those who are living with dementia, as well as wider impact education for family and carers of those living with dementia outside of direct clinical assessment.

About us

By coming to work at SLaM, you will join an organisation with a rich history and international reputation in mental health care, with access to professional development and the chance to work alongside world leaders in their field. Our close working relationship with King's Health Partners also opens up opportunities to get involved in academic research.

We're committed to a healthy work-life balance and ensuring our staff feel valued, with a comprehensive benefits package including:

• Generous pay, pensions and leave, dependent on role and length of service
• Flexible working, including part-time and job share options
• Career development, through mentoring, coaching, and leadership and talent programmes
• Car lease schemes at competitive rates
• NHS discounts of up to 10% with major retailers

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities (Clinical)

• To undertake direct patient care at least 70% of working hours. To practice at an advanced level, demonstrating a high level of autonomy and clinical decision making.
• The post holder will liaise proactively with external organisations to provide and promote seamless patient-centred care.
• Identify safeguarding concerns and report via agreed channels and seek advice through the safeguarding leadership structure
• To develop a detailed knowledge of services and agencies in the borough which can support people with dementia with a range of needs and effectively signpost patients, carers and GPs to these services and build professional links.
• To work alongside the voluntary sector organisations to provide expert clinical advice and guidance where there are concerns for their attendees and the services lack clinical expertise or direct access to this.
• To ensure that appropriate, consistent and realistic information is provided to patients and relatives.
• To provide support to carers of people with dementia
• To adhere with clinical care pathways for patients with dementia.

Practice and Service Development

• To act as a clinical dementia expert to primary care , supporting GP practice nurses and others with practical advice, signposting to relevant community services. To actively involve service users in providing feedback of their experience of the current service and suggestions for improvements.

Education and Training

• To educate professionals in Southwark on the range of services available for people with dementia and effective care planning, through carrying out joint work and feeding back actions from reviews
• To attend meetings and conferences, locally and nationally to maintain own specialist knowledge ensuring that the post holder is fully conversant with current issues.
• To participate in the training and education of nursing, medical and AHP staff within the Trust and Primary Care as required.

Quality Improvement and Service Evaluation

• To collect and present high quality data on the effectiveness of the service.
• To collect key outcome measures including rates of completed care planning for people with dementia, referral and re-referral rates, and patient experience and carer experience data.

Other

• To undertake any other reasonable duties as requested by line manager.

Person Specification

Qualifications / Education

Essential

• RMN or RGN (A)
• BA/BSc degree or working towards - in nursing or health-related subject (A)
• Clinical supervision or Mentoring course (A)

Desirable

• Dual registration RGN and RMN (A)
• Nurse prescribing course (A) (I)
• Teaching qualification (A)
• Master's degree or working towards a Master's degree (A)

Experience

Essential

• Substantial evidenced experience and knowledge of working within the area of dementia (A) (I)
• Substantial evidenced experience at band 6 level or equivalent (A) (I)
• Evidence of working closely with all those within a patient's care network, including physical health care and social care professionals (A) (I)
• Evidence of recent significant expert clinical skills and ability to work outside traditional boundaries (A) (I)
• Ability to influence and enhance patient care (A) (I)
• Ability to work safely as an autonomous practitioner (A) (I)
• Evidence of leadership and ability to implement change (A) (I)
• Evidence of leadership in standard setting and auditing (A) (I)
• Evidence of experience in service delivery and development (A) (I)
• Evidence of working across organisational boundaries (A)(I)
• Evidence of implementing evidence/research-based practice (A) (I)
• Evidence of publication or ability to write to this standard (A) (I)
• Working in a consultancy capacity (A) (I)

Desirable

• Experience of Quality Improvement (A) (I)
• Evidence of multi-professional research including a track record in applying research to advance practice (A) (I)

Skills

Essential

• A passion for improving outcomes for older people living with dementia and provide well organised and responsive patient-focused care (A) (I)
• Ability to complete holistic and comprehensive assessments of patients' needs exploring the psychosocial aspects of their health.
• Ability to manage own caseload with the responsibility of formulating effective risk assessments, care plans and medication reviews.
• Ability to analyse complex issues / problems, gather relevant information and exercise sound judgement in reaching the most appropriate conclusions (A) (I)
• Ability to keep clear, timely and accurate records of all care and decisions made guided by the NMC Code.
• Ability to build and maintain high standards of communication with a variety of personnel and agencies at all levels (A) (I)
• Evidence of a flexible and sensitive approach to care and service provision (A) (I)
• Ability to negotiate and reach compromises in verbal discussions in a manner which inspires confidence and respect from others (A) (I)
• Excellent oral and written communication skills (A) (I)
• Excellent clinical leadership skills and ability to enthuse others, co-ordinate and work collaboratively in a team (A) (I)
• Excellent inter-personal and influencing skills (A) (I)
• Able to interact well with all members of professional teams as and when needed (A) (I)
• Integrity and resilience (A) (I)
• Ability to present ideas with clarity and effectively to a diverse audience (A) (I)
• Able to provide clinical supervision / mentoring (A) (I)
• Evidence of ability to think strategically (A) (I)
• Ability to influence policy at local level (A) (I)

Desirable

• Recognition of own limitations, strengths and weaknesses and an ability to seek advice when necessary (A) (I)

Knowledge

Essential

• Sound knowledge of current issues in the care of older people with dementia and acute mental health problems within the community
• In-depth knowledge of dementia and appropriate therapeutic interventions (A) (I)
• Sound knowledge of the physical health problems older adults may face and the impact on their mental health (A) (I).
• Knowledge of the implications of the national dementia strategy and NICE guidelines for Dementia care (A) (I)
• Awareness of current professional nursing and NHS issues (A) (I)
• Research Awareness (A) (I)
• Continuing professional development (A)
• Awareness of Healthcare Governance issues and implications for practice (A) (I)
• Reflective approach to practice (A) (I)
• Maintaining audits to provide assurance of high-quality care.

Legal and requirements

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).