Eve, Senior Community Staff Nurse, South Eastern HSC Trust
SENIOR COMMUNITY STAFF NURSE – District Nursing
The Senior Community Staff Nurse is a member of the District Nursing Team and deputises in the absence of the District Nurse. They support the District Nurse to assist people to make autonomous decisions about their care by co-ordinating and delivering person and family centred care in their home or in the community. The Senior Community Staff Nurse uses a population health-based approach and works with GPs, other health and social care professionals, as well as individuals, families, carers and voluntary agencies.
The Senior Community Staff Nurse provides care and supports individuals who have a wide range of conditions and complex care needs, including palliative and end of life care. They enable people including those living with long term conditions to be cared for safely in their home and where possible reduce unnecessary hospital attendances or admissions. The Senior Community Staff Nurse also promotes self-care and independence, mental and physical health and well-being and prevention of ill health. The Senior Community Staff Nurse works in a self-organised District Nursing team using collective leadership skills and proactively leads quality improvement activities within the team.
Listen to the Senior Community Staff Nurse describing their role in District Nursing by clicking on their name.
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CLINICAL PRACTICE
The Senior Community Staff Nurse is developing clinical expertise in the provision of quality, person and family centred care for the caseload population in a variety of community settings, using a population health based approach. The role supports the District Nurse and enables them to develop their knowledge and skills in leadership, caseload management, care coordination, clinical decision-making and implementation of service developments.
The Senior Community Staff Nurse will:
- Provide clinical expertise and advice to deliver safe, effective, person & family centred care.
- Use person-centred assessment skills to determine a person’s holistic needs utilising a range of evidence-based tools to inform decision-making.
- Co-produce care plans with people families and/or carers, develop therapeutic relationships that promotes informed decision making and self-management.
- Supervise the delivery of co-produced care plans by the District Nursing Team, ensuring ongoing evaluation of care.
- Promote the holistic health and well-being of people and provide anticipatory care to promoting independence, reduce avoidable Emergency Department attendance, hospital admission and facilitate timely discharge.
- Undertake evidenced based prescribing from the appropriate formulary and according to professional and legislative frameworks and local policy.
- Support the District Nurse to fulfil the Palliative Care Key Worker role and function.
- Make a timely referral to another team/service, based on the assessed needs of the person.
- Understand lines of accountability with respect to delegation, supervision and mechanisms for the assurance of clinical and care governance.
- Develop and implement person-centred risk assessment and management strategies taking account of people’s views and responsibilities and promote safeguarding of individuals.
- Know when to apply safeguarding legislation and mental capacity legislation.
- Work collaboratively to identify and utilise e-Health technology and technology assisted learning systems to proactively enable care and support individuals to self-care.
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EDUCATION AND LEARNING
The Senior Community Staff Nurse recognises personal development requirements and facilitates learning for the District Nursing Team, other healthcare professionals, students, individuals, families and carers.
The Senior Community Staff Nurse will:
- Accept responsibility for own continuous professional development and the maintenance of professional competence and NMC revalidation.
- Engage in a range of learning activities and reflective supervision to improve care and practice.
- Supervise and support others, adopting a strengths-based approach, within the scope of each team member’s role and competence.
- Facilitates appraisals and KSF Personal Development Plans, mandatory and job specific training for the Team.
- Contribute to the development, delivery and evaluation of educational initiatives that address the needs of individuals, their families/carers/communities.
- Contribute to the development of a positive teaching/learning environment to develop the capability and capacity of staff and others to care for people in the community.
- Promotes a positive teaching/learning environment that supports individuals, their families/carers to make informed decisions and to self-manage their care.
- Contribute to the dissemination and implementation of the learning from incident reporting to facilitate the delivery of safe, effective person and family centred care and services.
- Participate and contribute to local clinical forums and/or professional groups.
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RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE
The Senior Community Staff Nurse has an enquiring approach to practice and updates their knowledge to ensure quality care is provided within service constraints.
The Senior Community Staff Nurse will:
- Critically appraise research and available evidence to enhance the quality, safety, and effectiveness of person-centred care.
- Support the implementation of evidenced–based public health initiatives to enable people to maximise their holistic health and well-being to “make every contact count”.
- Contribute to the implementation of the regionally agreed District Nursing Quality Indicators and other best practice guidelines, within the District Nursing Service.
- Utilise knowledge to identify, contribute to and participate in audit, quality improvement and research and use findings to inform decision making.
- Support the implementation and dissemination of audit, quality/service improvement and research findings through team meetings, Trust presentations, regional events, and publications.
- Engage with people and use the feedback from their experience of care to improve outcomes and service delivery.
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LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
The Senior Community Staff Nurse supports the District Nurse to lead, empower and challenge the District Nursing Team to deliver safe, effective, person-centred care within a local community and aligned to General Practice.
The Senior Community Staff Nurse will:
- Demonstrate the value and unique contribution of the District Nursing Service within the Primary Care multi-disciplinary team.
- Understand the relevant political, social and health economic strategies/policies that enable the provision of a person and family centred, responsive service.
- Use quality improvement methodologies to support service improvement and innovation.
- Contribute to the Population Health Profile and Community Health Needs Assessment to prioritise service delivery for health improvement.
- Advocate for and actively engage with people, families, carers and communities who require a District Nursing service.
- Model effective team working, problem-solving and collective leadership and apply the principles of human factors and strengths based approaches to problem solve and foster a caring, safe and supportive environment.
- Contribute to the allocation, management and monitoring of resources of the District Nursing Team.
- Support the District Nurse to lead, manage and monitor caseloads, delegating care for safe, effective, person-centred care delivery, using information systems.
- Demonstrate effective performance management of staff against local policies and procedures.
- Foster a culture of openness, recognising duty of candour and act on concerns raised.
- Develop own resilience to manage the demands and challenges of their role and use appropriate organisational support systems.
- Use information systems to inform decision making, safe staffing and workloads.
- Work collaboratively with others to: