Renal Frailty and Supportive Care CNS

Job overview

Are you passionate about helping people achieve the best possible quality of life, despite living with advanced kidney disease? Do you believe in truly patient-centred, holistic care and enjoy working autonomously while being part of a supportive multidisciplinary team? If so, this could be the perfect opportunity for you.

We are seeking an experienced and motivated nurse to join our innovative Renal Frailty and Supportive Care Service. This role combines advanced clinical practice, service development, and education to support older people and those living with frailty, complex symptoms, supportive care needs, and end-of-life care requirements related to kidney disease.

Working within a nurse-led service you will manage your own caseload, providing comprehensive assessment, symptom management, education, advance care planning, and decision support to patients and their families. You will have strong support from nurse and medical consultants as required. You will work closely with other specialists, particularly geriatric, palliative care and community teams to ensure care is personalised, coordinated and responsive to individual needs and preferences.

This is an exciting opportunity for a nurse who values autonomy, thrives on building meaningful relationships with patients and families, and is committed to improving the quality of care and quality of life for people living with advanced kidney disease.

Main duties of the job

• To work within the Care Group to provide and develop a comprehensive patient-centred, nurse-led renal frailty and supportive care service.
• To manage a patient case-load through nurse led clinics, providing holistic nursing care to those with frailty, supportive, palliative and end of life care needs. This includes patients who have chosen supportive care and with those who are on dialysis and either frail, experiencing complex renal-related symptoms, or considering withdrawal.
• To provide individualised education and comprehensive decision support to patients and relatives.
• To work collaboratively with local geriatric and palliative care services in secondary and primary care and other community services for older people thus facilitating high quality individualised patient care and access to specialist services.
• To effectively support, motivate and be a role model for staff.
• To proactively participate in research, audit and measuring quality indicators within the specialty.
• To develop all staff within the multidisciplinary team, providing support, advice, formal and informal teaching with regard to frailty and supportive care.

Working for our organisation

The Trust provides a full range of local and specialist services across its five sites. Transforming Healthcare is the vision at the heart of the King’s Strategy – 2026 to 2031. Together, we are pursuing six strategic ambitions: delivering high-quality patient care; being a great place to work; leading pioneering research, innovation and education; building strong and successful partnerships; providing timely and efficient care; and ensuring long-term financial sustainability. Achieving these ambitions will require all of us to work as one Team King’s, united by a shared commitment to our values of being caring, collaborative, inclusive and innovative. By living these values every day, we will transform healthcare for our patients, our communities and each other

We are at a pivotal point in our history and we require individuals who are ready to join a highly professional team and make a real, lasting difference to our patients and our people.

King’s is committed to delivering Sustainable Healthcare for All via our Green Plan. In line with national Greener NHS ambitions, we have set net zero carbon targets of 2040 for our NHS Carbon Footprint and 2045 for our NHS Carbon Footprint Plus. Everyone’s contribution is required in order to meet the goals set out in our Green Plan and we encourage all staff to work responsibly, minimising their contributions to the Trust’s carbon emissions, waste and pollution wherever possible.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical responsibilities

• Co-ordinate the care of supportive care and frail patients ensuring that the patients are closely monitored and effectively prepared for their disease trajectory, including advance care planning and end of life care discussions.
• Use specialist clinical assessment skills and clinical judgment to assess, plan, implement and evaluate care (in the core areas of disease progression, anaemia, bone health, RRT preparation, fluid balance) using a recognised evidence-based model of care. When necessary, discussing possible treatment interventions with senior colleague to agree changes.
• Plan and monitor the impact of interventions in order to manage symptoms associated with CKD.
• Order, interpret and act on relevant tests and investigations.
• Ensure comprehensive frailty assessments are performed and documented at appropriate intervals across all modalities.
• Use expert teaching, communication, and decision support skills (e.g. motivational interviewing) to support patients and their families to share decisions and be involved in their care as far as they wish and is clinically appropriate.
• Be an effective role model and resource person to patients and other health care workers demonstrating expertise in the management of frail patients requiring supportive care.
• Manage own patient caseload and run nurse-led outpatient clinics.

Clinical Management

• Co-ordinate patient activity within the frailty/supportive care service, maintaining effective liaison with all other clinical areas in the department and all other support personnel.
• Optimise communication and collaborative working with local geriatric and palliative care services in secondary and primary care and other community services for older people thus facilitating high quality individualised patient care and access to specialist services.
• Ensure regular and effective communication systems are implemented and utilized across the MDT.
• Optimise patient safety ensuring formal reporting and recording of adverse incidents and dissemination of learning from these events in line with Trust policy.
• Participate in responding to and learning from complaints.
• Support nursing colleagues with delivery of renal services outside of the supportive care service when required (within scope of competence).

Education and Training

• Directly provide expert individual and group education regarding frailty/supportive care to patients and relatives.
• Train and support frailty link nurses across the unit.
• Provide formal and informal teaching relating to frailty and supportive care to colleagues across the MDT.
• Maintain an up-to-date library (physical and electronic as appropriate) of information and resources informing staff, patients and relatives about frailty and supportive care services available within the Renal Unit
• Educate acute inpatients when appropriate.

Research and Service Development

• To contribute to the development of supportive care in the region through participation in the London Kidney Network workstream.
• Support and participate in research, audit and quality improvement within the area.
• Contribute to the use of evidence to support practice and generate ideas for the potential generation of new evidence related to specialty.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Renal or supportive care/palliative/frailty post-registration qualification.

Desirable criteria

• Advanced Clinical Assessment qualification
• Non-medical Prescribing

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Knowledge and experience of caring for people with advanced kidney disease and/or frailty and/or at end of life.

Skills

Essential criteria

• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Experience of data collection for audit purposes
• Ability to impart complex information to patients, relatives and carers, with different levels of understanding

Desirable criteria

• Quality improvement and service development skills

IMPORTANT

• Check your email account regularly as this is how we will communicate with you
• If you delete the job from any of your accounts, you may be prevented from accessing further communications
• To enquire about your application or inform us of any changes in your circumstances, please contact the named person on this advert
• Please provide email addresses for referees where possible
• Please review the documentation on our recruitment microsite, particularly the Trust’s criminal records checking policy
• All staff have a responsibility for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults and for ensuring they are aware of the specific duties relating to their role.
• Please note that the closing date is given as a guide. On occasion, we might close a vacancy early due to a high number of applications being received. You are advised to submit your application as early as possible to avoid disappointment.

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