Deputy Clinical Nurse Specialist in Surveillance – Central Wound Hub

Deputy Clinical Nurse Specialist in Surveillance – Central Wound Hub

Main area

Deputy Clinical Nurse Specialist in Surveillance – Central Wound Hub

Grade

NHS AfC: Band 6

Contract

Fixed term: 18 months (Charity funded)

Hours

- Full time
- Flexible working

37.5 hours per week (Weekends)

Job ref

196-NM12170

Employer

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Employer type

NHS

Site

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, Guy's Hospital

Town

London

Salary

£44,806 - £53,134 per annum inc HCA

Salary period

Yearly

Closing

28/10/2024 23:59

Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts.





We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.

Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.

Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions.







Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.

In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.

We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research.





We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.

Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.

The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success.





We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.

We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.

Job overview

This is an exciting new role aimed at advancing our innovative remote surgical wound monitoring program to the next level. The successful candidate ensure the smooth running the seven day service for the Central Wound Hub, providing a world-class service for both our patients and staff.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will be responsible for the running the seven day service for the Central Wound Hub.





This will include training, scheduling and supporting the team, ensuring timely and appropriate remote care advice and referrals for surgical patients and carers, and expanding the service for all interested surgical specialisms. The post holder will be responsible for audit activities related to the service and will undertake quality improvement and innovation projects as required.

Working for our organisation

The Surveillance and Innovation Unit (SUI) is a new unit in the Directorate of Infection. The Central Wound Hub will scale and sustain our award-winning digital surveillance programme. The Hub team will work with the surgical site infection (SSI) team, a dynamic, friendly team covering specialisms across the trust.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities







- The post holder along with team leaders, will oversee the daily running of a new Central Wound Hub (CWH). The post holder will ensure the implementation of standard operating procedures for the different surgical specialisms, provide assurance of clinical reviews and overview of outcomes, develop a clear referral pathway (using EPIC) and have responsibility to ensure clinical concerns are appropriately escalated and actioned with the multidisciplinary team.
- Will be responsible for actively supporting the Trust SSI lead for SSI surveillance team and team leads, ensuring accurate and timely data for mandatory and voluntary surgical site infection (SSI) surveillance across the organisation including all hospital sites (Guy’s, St. Thomas’. Evelina, Royal Brompton,





and Harefield hospitals), with potential to pilot the CWH model externally.
- Actively support the CWH and SSI team to deliver clinically driven quality improvement projects, resources, network events, service evaluations, innovation and research for SSI surveillance internally and externally.

Clinical

- - To oversee the daily running of the new Central Wound Hub to ensure patients are reviewed and responded to in a timely manner on the digital remote wound platform (Isla).
- To support and line management of junior colleagues for optimal review patient submission on Isla for a seven-day and out-of-hours service.
- To provide timely review of patient submissions to the Central Wound Hub, ensuring appropriate reassurance, advice and/or referral as required.






- To ensure early identification of patients who require MDT escalation for infection or delayed wound healing, and action this or support junior staff in doing so.
- To ensure information on clinically relevant information on community treatment is recorded for visibility and optimal care delivery.
- To collect and/or oversee data on clinical outcomes.
- To identify areas for improvement in relation to the Central Wound Hub and work with the Trust Lead for SSI to deliver an improvement plan, using appropriate methodology.
- To participate in research studies as required.
- To work within the SSI team providing specialist input in SSIS data collection, handling ensuring correct completion of surveillance forms or electronic surveillance data platforms
- To undertake audit in relation to SSIS and to ensure audit documentation is completed correctly.
- To work autonomously managing a case load of defined group of patients ensuring close surveillance is undertaken to identify Surgical Site Infections (SSI) and determine incidence and prevalence of infections
- To promote a patient focused approach to care ensuring high standards of surgical care are followed and in collaboration with all relevant health
- To support the Lead Nurse in the initiation of appropriate actions to enable all grades and disciplines of staff to prevent SSI
- To assess surgical patients to identify signs of infection and initiate interventions to prevent or mitigate infection or wound healing issues
- To support, encourage and advise (as required) staff on the management of patients who develop
- Participate in data entry and coding
- Participate in telephone and remote digital post discharge follow up surveillance
- To provide information to patients and their carers as required where a need has been identified in relation to infection surveillance
- To provide specialist nursing input in the identification, prevention and monitoring of SSI
- To support the Infection control surveillance lead nurse in the review of microbiological data to evaluate the efficiency of an intervention and plan future practice in consultation with relevant clinical leads
- Support general enquiries relating to SSIS from patients, staff and the general public always acting appropriately, sensitively and professionally to ensure confidentiality is maintained at all times
- To collaborate with the SSI team to investigate potential outbreaks
- Collaborate and support surgical teams in providing information which enables patients to make choices about adopting a healthier lifestyle and actions to reduce surgical site
- To report any unsafe infection prevention and control practices to the ward staff and/or the IPC team.
- To participate in the promotion and maintenance of effective communication with patients, health professionals in relation to surgical site wound surveillance.
- To support the Infection control surveillance lead nurse in ensuring that national mandatory surveillance data collection targets are met and data is collected, inputted and followed up by the Surveillance Team in a timely and efficient
- To maintain effective communication within the SSIS, IPC, Intravenous Access Devices and Tissue Viability teams and with the wider
- To support the Trust Lead for SSI Surveillance, Research and Innovation in assisting clinical teams in the formulation and initiation of appropriate strategies or action plans required to minimize the risk of SSIs.

Management

- Provide clinical support for junior colleagues, including ongoing training needs and development, providing consistency even when working remotely.
- Review shift rotas for the Central Wound Hub, ensuring adequate cover for a seven-day service including out-of-hours.
- Assist Trust and team leaders as to deliver and manage quality improvement projects.
- Attendance of clinical governance meetings for relevant surgical directorates, if required.
- To organise network surgical specialism meetings (external) alongside SSI team colleagues.
- Identify technical issues and work with Isla to resolve this in a timely fashion.
- Maintain accurate records of the SSIS ensuring that confidentiality is
- To liaise with the SSIS Team and external agencies to ensure that appropriate Trust data is provided to Public Health
- To maintain a flexible approach to the role and ensure provisions on an efficient and effective service within agreed
- Supervision responsibility for junior SSIS Team members
- Act as a facilitator and change agent enabling clinical staff to embrace strategies for
- Prioritise workload taking into account varying demands and
- Identify problems related to the prevention of SSIs and be involved in developing improved methods of work in a multi-disciplinary team
- Develop and maintain optimal relationships with lead clinicians, senior nursing staff, clinical audit leads the infection and prevention control teams, microbiology teams and those involved in SSI surveillance.
- To support and work collaboratively with SSIS Team colleagues in the production of logical, structured written reports for relevant clinical staff, the trust Infection Control Committee SSIS committee and the Trust Infection Control and Decontamination Assurance Committee (TICDAC).

Clinical Research, Audit, Quality & Education

- Responsible for monitoring and ensuring the validity of patient information collected by clinical teams for the surveillance programme within the Trust alongside SSI team
- Take responsibility for ensuring the standard of data collection by the SSI team and data entry is accurate and
- Participate in clinical audit, quality improvement, service evaluation, innovation and research as requested by the Trust SSI Lead.
- Work with clinical areas where SSIS in undertaken in identifying the education
- To organise and deliver, with support from the Infection control surveillance lead nurse, the feedback of SSI surveillance results to clinical teams; to review results and where appropriate agree
- To participate in the training and development of the SSI team and the wider surgical teams

e.g. UKHSA SSI surveillance training.

- To participate alongside SSI team colleagues, in education of clinical and non-clinical teams at Infection Control Awareness days, Infection control link practitioners' course and meetings and Quarterly Infection control
- Incorporate UKHSA guidelines, NICE guidelines, and other public issues into guidance and advice for all staff in consultation with clinical leads and the SSIS lead nurse
- Critically appraise and evaluate IPC practice around SSI through a structured audit programme designed to reduce
- Acts as a facilitator in relevant clinical trials related to
- Present clinical findings at and attendance at conferences nationally when required
- Develop and improve own competence in a structured way through self-assessment, education, self-directed learning and conferences

Guy’s and St Thomas’ celebrates, respects and values the diversity of its staff and patients. We review our policies, procedures and practices to ensure that all employees, patients and carers are treated equitable according to their needs. We are actively committed to ensuring that no one who applies for a job, works or study’s at the Trust, or accesses our services is discriminated against on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, religion or belief, age, gender identity , gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity/paternity, or marital/civil partnership.

Applications are welcomed from applicants with a disability. We can make reasonable adjustments and offer support and advice in a variety of ways throughout the application process. Equality of opportunity is our policy.

As an organisation we are committed to developing our services in ways that best suit the needs of our patients. This means that some staff groups will increasingly be asked to work a more flexible shift pattern so that we can offer services in the evenings or at weekends.

Flexible working

We are committed to supporting all employees to achieve a healthy work life balance and to work in a way that is best for them and our patients. We will consider all requests to work flexibly, taking in to account the individual’s personal circumstances as well the needs of the service. We encourage all prospective applicants to discuss their individual circumstances with the recruiting manager as part of the on-boarding process.

Your e-mail address is important to us - We communicate to all job applicants via the e-mail address which has been provided on the application form. Please ensure that you check your e-mail on a regular basis.

Please apply for this post by clicking "Apply Online Now."

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Queries to find out more about the role are welcomed.

▶️ Deputy Clinical Nurse Specialist in Surveillance – Central Wound Hub
🖊️ Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, Guy's Hospital
📍 London