Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse
Job overview
We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced and driven registered nurse to join our Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse team (band 6, 26.25 hrs/week), as part of the Christie nutrition and dietetic team in our world class cancer centre, providing an opportunity to develop your practice within this specialist area of nursing.
If you are you passionate and have and interest or experience of working within in nutrition and/or oncology, and experience of varied feeding tubes, such as gastrostomies, nasogastric tubes, nasojejunal tubes and want to develop your skills further, then this is the post for you. The experienced and well-established team will support with competency and confidence development for this specialist role.
As a member of the Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse team, you will work closely with the dietetic team, and, as well as collaborate with the wider MDT and stake holders, to deliver high quality patient centred care for patients requiring artificial nutrition.
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As a band 6 Specialist Nutrition Support Nurse you will work within the team to provide a specialist nutrition support nurse service for patients aimed at continually improving standards of care and facilitating a multidisciplinary team approach.
You will participate in the nurse management of patients receiving artificial nutrition support via enteral feeding, utilising both gastrostomies, jejunostomies, nasogastric and nasojejunal routes, as well as supporting patients through the HPN (Home Parenteral nutrition) referral process, and provision of venting gastrojejunostomy support for some of these patients.
Working with the team you will ensure the nutritional needs of patients are met, providing counselling, tube training, tube placement/replacement, follow-up/aftercare for patients receiving artificial nutrition support, this includes supporting the gastrostomy drop clinic in conjunction with the nursing team.
You will work alongside the specialist nutrition support nurse team in the development and delivery of education and training programmes for health care professionals in the Trust and at regional level on nursing related nutritional care.
You will be an active member of the wider Nutrition and Dietetic team, and an active role model for the service. Within this role you will work closely with the wider MDT and external agencies to ensure national nutritional performance and clinical standards are met.
Please see job description for full duties.
Working for our organisation
The Christie is one of Europe’s leading cancer centres, looking after more than 64,000 patients a year. We are based in Manchester and serve a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 25% patients are referred to us from other parts of the country.
We are the largest radiotherapy provider in the NHS with one in 20 treatments delivered at The Christie. We have up to 15 linear accelerators operating across our network of sites. We operate the largest chemotherapy unit in the UK on our main site and treatments are also provided at 13 other networked sites, and in patients homes. And as a specialist tertiary surgical centre, we focus on rare cancers, complex procedures, and multidisciplinary approaches to cancer surgery, specialising in colorectal, peritoneal, gynaecological, urological and plastic surgery.
We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years. We have been named by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), as one of the best hospitals providing opportunities for patients to participate in clinical research studies, with more than 800 studies open at any time, caring for over 3,000 patients.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Clinical
1. To support the senior nutrition nurse and be responsible for own caseload providing an expert assessment plan and evaluation within the specialist area for enteral tubes
2. To conduct regular ward visits to ensure compliance with nutritional standards and act as a resource for nutrition care planning and feeding tubes care delivery.
3. To be involved in patient selection and education regarding enteral and parenteral nutrition support.
4. To attend multidisciplinary / best interest meetings to discuss management of patients requiring enteral or parenteral nutrition at home.
5. To maintain accurate, comprehensive and up to date documentation on the patient electronic system of individual patients in line with local and national standards and trust policy on confidentiality.
6. To cover and support the organisation of home parenteral nutrition feed discharge patients as required alongside other nutrition nurse colleagues
Enteral
7. To counsel and educate patients during the consent process for placement of enteral feeding tubes.
8. To be competent to place nasogastric feeding tubes.
9. To coordinate the gastrostomy service in collaboration with the senior nutrition nurse and interventional radiology team.
10. To provide follow-up after interventional procedures for nutritional support and help with audit of outcome data.
11. To be able to place secondary gastrostomy tube devices in hospital.
12. To work alongside the dietitians and be involved in the setting up of a home enteral feed to ensure a safe and timely discharge.
13. To educate and support the patient, carers, nursing staff and district nurses on the care of enteral feeding tubes before and after discharge.
14. To work with the senior nutrition nurse to develop the nutritional nursing care service to patients in line with national standards.
15. To work closely with the nutrition nurse teams, dietitians, nurse leaders and nurse clinicians to promote good practice and lead and support changes in practice
16. To take an active role in audit and annually supporting the review of nursing guidelines, policies and patient information concerning enteral and parenteral nutrition in conjunction with the dietitians and senior nutrition nurse.
17. To identify clinical issues and incidents within the Trust that reduces the quality of care within the specialist service. Devise strategies to counter these to ensure the delivery of safe and effective care.
18. To maintain patient data and statistics for service development
19. To attend and participate in departmental, professional update meetings and trust nutrition related meetings.
20. To be responsible for own clinical professional development (CPD) to maintain competency and to ensure best practice.
21. Take an active part in professional networks to ensure the exchange of knowledge and ideas, both locally and nationally. Contribute to the development of national policy.
22. In conjunction with the senior nutrition nurse provide specialist nursing knowledge of nutritional care to medical and nursing staff and students
23. In conjunction with the senior nutrition nurse deliver an education programme on the nurse management of oncology patients receiving nutrition support internally and externally at regional level to nursing staff and other health care professionals.
24. To work with the senior nutrition nurse to develop the nutrition link nurse group and be accountable to the Nutrition steering group.
25. To promote good nursing practice in enteral and parenteral feeding to ward staff.
26. To participate in the education of nursing staff on nutritionally screening patients, care planning and protected mealtimes and carry out regular audits.
The closing date for this post may be extended if there are insufficient applicants or brought forward if there is a high volume of applicants.
📝 Application Information - If you have not heard from us within four weeks of the closing date, I regret that on this occasion your application will have been unsuccessful.
🌍 Sponsorship Information - We are an approved sponsoring organisation. Applications will be considered from applicants requiring sponsorship alongside all other applications. Please be aware, not all roles are eligible for sponsorship. You can review the list of eligible role and requirements on the government website.
🔍 Pre-Employment Checks - To confirm your suitability for the role, we will carry out pre-employment checks in line with NHS Employment Check Standards. These include:
- Identity verification
- Right to work check
- Disclosure and barring service (DBS)/Criminal record check (dependent on role, payment of this will be the applicants responsibility)
- Professional registration and/or qualification check
- Occupational health assessment
- Employment history and reference validation
All applicants external to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust will be required to provide their HMRC employment history to cover the most recent three years employment. This information will used to validate employment history and references.
If you require sponsorship, we will assess your eligibility based on current government guidance. If the role is not eligible and you cannot demonstrate your right to work, your conditional offer may be withdrawn.
✅ If You're Offered the Role - you will be agreeing to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust transferring the information contained in this application to its preferred applicant management system. If you are offered a job information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system. Please note, all communication regarding your application will be made via email, please ensure you check your junk/spam folders as emails are sometimes filtered there.
The Inter-Authority Transfer (IAT) process is a critical and beneficial component of ESR and will form part of the recruitment process. In the event that you are successful following interview your previous NHS employment data, if applicable will be transferred from your current / most recent employer.
🌍 Sponsorship Information - We are an approved sponsoring organisation. Applications will be considered from applicants requiring sponsorship alongside all other applications. Please be aware, not all roles are eligible for sponsorship. You can review the list of eligible role and requirements on the government website.
🚭 No Smoking Policy - You should be aware the Trust operates a No Smoking Policy and therefore employees are not permitted to smoke at work.
📣 Additional Information - We want to ensure that everyone who works at the Christie or uses our services is welcomed, valued and treated with dignity and respect. The Christie values diversity and is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for all and fair representation across the organisation at all levels. In support of these commitments, we particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people and people with disabilities for this post. Appointment will be only on merit.
We are committed to creating a balanced and diverse workforce. As such we welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. Together we will foster inclusion and tackle inequity and health inequalities in cancer care.
As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the vacancy.
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity in all our activities. We have a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery in any of its forms, including slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour, and human trafficking. We are fully committed to acting ethically and with transparency in all our business dealings and relationships, and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in our organisation or supply chains.