HealthJobsUK

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. Communication and relationship skills

• Initiate and undertake agreed health assessments on children and families, including vulnerable children of various ages
• Facilitate and promote links between the children’s services and other agencies to promote health and wellbeing; ensuring the voice of the child is heard
• Encourage and motivate children, young people and their families to engage in public health messages and change behaviours
• Communicate highly complex difficult messages to parents or schools.
• Receive, translate and communicate highly complex information in a suitable format to the target audience, overcoming barriers to understanding
• Act as a link school nurse for an identified number of schools

2. Knowledge, training and experience

• A registered nurse with the specialist community public health nursing qualification in school nursing
• Experience of working in a range of community settings including family homes, clinics and schools
• Mentorship qualification and experience of supporting pre and post qualification students
• Knowledge of the key drivers and other relevant legislation/guidance for school nursing services; including legislation and guidance in the safeguarding of children and adults
• Experience of employing evidence based practice and multi-disciplinary team working
• Experience of delivering presentations to children, young people and families as well as other professionals eg teaching staff

3. Analytical and judgement skills

• Make clinical decisions involving a range of facts or situations including risk assessments; clinical need and disclosures
• Assess and identify the needs of individual children referred to the service, plan care and make appropriate referrals/signpost
• Complete holistic assessments considering the Think Family approach
• Assist in local audits, risk management and the review and development of local policies and guidelines
• Be actively involved in the collection and analysis of information for school health profiling
• Assess and evaluate the performance of team members, providing appropriate feedback, and participate in the appraisal process
• Provide targeted health interventions to children and young people with identified health needs
• Exercise leadership, judgment, and management to ensure excellent clinical practice, maintaining high standards of care

4. Planning and organisational skills

• Manage and organise a defined caseload independently, addressing the health needs of children according to evidence based practice
• Provide targeted health interventions to children and young people with identified health needs
• Ensure the most effective use of human and physical resources within the team by appropriate delegation of work and use/application of resources.
• Contribute to meeting the learning and development needs of pre and post registration student nurses and new members of staff, which provides a positive culture to enhance learning and service improvement.
• Maintain accurate and contemporaneous health records in accordance with NMC and MCH standards
• To understand and work towards ensuring that services are delivered in accordance with the service specification
• Write and submit reports in a timely manner
• Facilitate regular meetings with link schools
• Manage own workload, reporting issues to the Lead School Nurse or Clinical Lead for PHN Schools, when difficulties arise, offering solutions where possible

5. Physical skills

• Ability to travel to a range of community settings including home, clinic and schools in Medway and occasionally outside of Medway.
• Ability to carry equipment such as scales and Leicester measures
• Ability to use computer keyboards including laptops

6. Responsibility for patient / client care

• Manage and organise a caseload, addressing the health needs of children according to evidence based practice and service provision
• Provide targeted health interventions to children and young people with identified need following holistic assessment
• Act as a link school nurse for an identified number of schools
• Contribute to the identification/assessment and support of vulnerable children, including those within the Safeguarding arena and represent the service at key partnership meetings inclusive of safeguarding meeting
• Participate in nurse-led clinics
• Facilitate/deliver training sessions where identified health needs require training for non-medical school staff
• Participate in targeted health promoting activities
• Advise on public health issues and infection control within the school community
• Identify vulnerability that may impact on the child or young person’s health, education, school attendance
• Help children and young people to develop a knowledge of self-care, autonomy and decision making, including how to access health services
• Promote the safeguarding of children through multi-disciplinary team working and work within the Medway Safeguarding Children’s Partnership policies/procedures and guidance for the protection of children. Be aware of emerging issues such as sexual exploitation, gang violence and extremism
• Maintain caseload responsibility for children with a safeguarding plan and delegate appropriately to other members of the school nurse team
• Ensure that confidentiality and the rights of consent relating to young people are followed
• Report relevant clinical information/clinical issues to the Professional Lead and Clinical Team Leader
• Observe and maintain strict confidentiality with regards to any patient/family/staff/records and information in line with information governance

7. Responsibility for policy and service development implementation

• Participate in clinical supervision as per organisation policy
• Actively participate in and support the development of evidence based practice and clinical audit in collaboration with lead professionals and managers
• To participate in service or practice initiatives to improve client care standards and outcomes
• Contributing to the development of proposals, by participating in working groups or providing feedback as required

8. Responsibilities for financial and physical resources

• The School Nurse post does not carry any financial responsibility in relation to budget control

9. Responsibilities for human resources (HR)

• Responsible for day-to-day supervision and line management of skill mix  staff members within the team
• Development of skill mix staff
• Plan and co-ordinate team cover during sickness, annual leave and absence to meet the needs of the service
• Assist in the recruitment and induction of new staff members.  Provide mentorship for pre-registration students
• Provide clinical supervision, mentorship and community experience to pre- and postregistration nursing/ midwifery and school nurse students.
• Maintaining own professional development and requirement to take part in appraisal

10. Responsibilities for information resources

• Complete electronic records, in accordance with local and national guidance, ensuring that records are contemporaneous and accurate
• Maintain accurate and comprehensive nursing administrative and statistical records, regularly providing management with returns and statistics as requested

11. Responsibilities for research and development (R&D)

• Undertake appropriate surveys and audit to influence local and national policies ensuring researched-based practice
• Gather research evidence required to ensure advances in nursing and high quality team performance
• Assist in the delivery of an agreed audit and development programme that links into the health care governance framework

12. Freedom to act

• Guided by established policies and guidelines
• Professionally and legally responsible and accountable for all aspects of own work
• Works independently as an autonomous practitioner