This is a Liaison practitioner role to support the management of patients with FND within Southmead hospital. This would include:

• Close working with the inpatient Neurology therapy, nursing and medical teams in the Brunel building to develop pathways for people with functional neurological symptoms to improve their care and reduce their length of stay within the hospital.

• Support ED and the Neurology on call team through one stop education and therapy, alongside signposting to more appropriate outpatient services.
• Ensuring frequent attenders at ED are identified and that a Patient Specific Protocol (PSP) is in place for future care.
• Developing an FND care 'bundle' for ED to streamline the patient journey for those presenting with functional neurological symptoms. ('what is FND', how to explain it, useful patient and clinician websites, who to refer to, summary of outpatient services).
• Strengthening relationships with community therapy services by facilitating training in neurophysiotherapy and occupational therapy strategies with the aim of managing more of these conditions in the community.
• Helping to ensure we continue to closely work with the support groups for those with functional neurological symptoms, both in our local community and the national and international groups.

Main duties of the job

To provide a specialist liaison service and as an autonomous, advanced practitioner, contribute to the management of a complex caseload (e.g. patients with a wide variety of medical, functional, psychological and social problems), across a number of wards and departments within the hospital.

About us

North Bristol NHS Trust employs over 12,000 staff providing healthcare to the residents of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset from our award-winning hospital building at Southmead. We are the regional Major Trauma Centre, and an internationally recognised centre of excellence in a range of services and major specialities. Our vision is that by enabling our teams to be the best that they can be, we will provide exceptional healthcare, personally delivered.

We commit to treating each patient as an individual with respect and dignity, aiming to deliver excellent clinical outcomes and a first-class experience for everyone who uses our services.

North Bristol NHS Trust values all people as individuals. We aim to be an anti-discriminatory organisation and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We welcome applicants from all underrepresented groups.

Job description

Job responsibilities

Clinical

To provide a specialist liaison service and as an autonomous, advanced practitioner, contribute to the management of a complex caseload (e.g. patients with a wide variety of medical, functional, psychological and social problems), across a number of wards and departments within the hospital. This will include:

Supporting therapy and nursing teams in the assessment, treatment, care provision and discharge planning of patients with functional neurological disorder.

To work with ED staff to develop personal support plans/care bundles to prevent unnecessary admissions and improve support for patients within their own home setting.

To provide highly specialist assessment of patients skills, functional performance needs and need for specialist assistive devices. Consideration is given to patients views and wishes, medical history and prognosis, sensorimotor skills, communication skills, social skills, cognitive abilities, behaviour, safety issues, environmental and psycho-social factors, and where appropriate, the viewpoints, abilities, and other issues of carers these multiple factors are often conflicting.

To use advanced skills in analysing the results of the assessments, diagnosing the cause of problems, consider a range of options, formulate professional judgements, work with patients to identify goals, develop and organise the provision of interventions, which are appropriate for the patient and others involved in their care.

To be responsible for deciding priorities for own work area, balancing other clinical, non-clinical and professional demands, and to ensure that these remain in accordance with those of the specialty and Trust wide service. This may involve reprioritising work activities and schedules

To assess and manage clinical risk within own caseload, responding to and resolving problems identified by others.

To plan and implement interventions, in collaboration with the patient, or with their carer for patients with reduced capacity, as well as with their team within the hospital, in line with Trust policy, using highly specialist approaches to achieve therapeutic goals.

To identify the need for and plan, organise and liaise with colleagues who can carry out home assessment visits with patients, and use specialist knowledge and skills to identify and assess patients complex needs and risks.

To demonstrate and apply a high level of understanding of the effect of disability, to be able to educate patient and carer in issues relating to their diagnosis/ prognosis and rehabilitation, and promote an understanding of its functional implications and the adaptation required.

To monitor, evaluate and modify treatment for patients with multiple needs in order to measure progress, ensure effectiveness of intervention, and monitor outcomes in order to work towards appropriate discharge.

To undertake risk assessments in relation to patient and carers in order to reduce risk, maintain independence and improve safety. Provide advice and develop strategies in relation to outcomes and liaise with other professions/agencies regarding future management.

Give specialist advice to the multi-disciplinary team on the treatment and handling of patients to maximise their rehabilitation potential and enable the planning of their future clinical management

Give specialist advice and training to community partners on the treatment and handling of patients to maximise their rehabilitation potential and enable the planning of their future clinical management

To identify care needs required after discharge, make recommendations and refer for appropriate involvement of outside agencies to provide further rehabilitation or care.

To be a lead member of the multi-disciplinary team, attending case conferences and meetings and ensuring accurate documentation of the outcome of these meetings within the patients records.

To ensure that up to date written and electronic records, reports and activity data are maintained for self and MDT in accordance with professional and local standards.

To measure and demonstrate effectiveness of role in improving patient functional, quality of life and satisfaction outcomes staff satisfaction and trust related outcomes such as saved bed days.

Communication

Communicate complex patient-related information effectively to ensure collaborative working with MDT colleagues across Health and Social Care sectors, including statutory, private and voluntary agencies, demonstrating highly skilled clinical reasoning and using sound negotiating skills on a daily basis to ensure delivery of a co-ordinated service. This includes participation in discussions and decisions with regard to patient programmes as a member of the multi-disciplinary team.

To use a range of verbal and non-verbal communication tools to communicate effectively with patients to progress rehabilitation and treatment programmes, and to ensure an understanding of their condition/problem so that patients are supported in self-management of their condition to use communication skills of motivational interviewing, explanation and gaining informed consent with a wide variety of patients to overcome barriers to effective communication, including: cognitive impairment, expressive and receptive communication difficulties, embarrassment, anxiety, pain, fear and visual/hearing impairment to devise and implement strategies to overcome these barriers, and to teach others to do so.

Communicate effectively with other statutory, private and voluntary agencies in order to achieve the patients identified needs.

To effectively counsel, and support other staff, in their counselling on sensitive or unwelcome information regarding patients rehabilitation, goals, progress, potential for recovery and recommended discharge destinations to patients, carers and other professionals. At times this process may be stressful and involve difficult issues e.g. Patient being unsafe to go home which can result in dealing with anger, anxiety and distress, differences in professional opinion.

To effectively use written, verbal, non-verbal and electronic communication as appropriate, to ensure that this is in a format that is accessible to the patient, their carers and to members of the multi-disciplinary team, and to be aware of how to access alternative communication systems e.g. interpreters

To competently deal with patients/carers who may be dissatisfied with their experience of service provision and to negotiate an outcome that is acceptable to all parties, using an awareness of the Trusts complaints procedure, in order to diffuse potentially volatile situations.

To adhere to Trust and professional policies and standards in relation to correspondence and confidentiality, and ensure compliance by other multi-disciplinary team members.

To promote awareness of the liaison role on a formal level and informally by appropriate liaison and explanation of role with other individuals and agencies.

To ensure effective communication and dissemination of information within and between relevant teams and ensure team issues are reported to the appropriate senior person.

To act as an advisor on professional and clinical issues to the clinical specialty and work with the other operational managers.

Person Specification

Knowledge

Essential

• Degree or Diploma in AHP or Nursing.
• Registration with an appropriate governing body (eg HCPC or NMC).
• Post registration experience as a senior AHP/Nurse.
• Post graduate training relevant to specialised area.
• Significant experience in the relevant clinical specialty.
• Child Protection and Safeguarding Adults training
• Evidence of advanced skills and knowledge of the theory and application of assessments and interventions related to specialty and an ability to work with complex cases.
• Evidence of development in management and leadership.
• Applied knowledge of the legislation and roles of the NHS and Social Care in the provision of services.
• Advanced and applied knowledge of the models, frameworks and approaches used in clinical specialty.
• Advanced knowledge and experience in medicine/acute care.
• Experienced in developing the role of clinical governance in the provision of therapy.
• Experienced in use of audit and research in the provision and planning of evidence based care.

Skills

Essential

• A detailed knowledge base and excellent problem solving skills to enable the use of clinical reasoning in the evaluation of all interventions.
• Advanced skills in functional and standardised assessment tools and analysis of functional performance.
• Highly developed skills in using different communication strategies and ability to modify the approach according to patients' and carers' own communication and understanding. Needs to consider hearing impairment, altered perception, cognitive deficit, level of consciousness, dysphasia, pain, fear, mental health problems, psychological issues, dementia and learning difficulties.
• Highly developed skills in achieving a therapeutic relationship including counselling, listening, motivating, negotiating and providing empathy and reassurance enabling patients' and carers' to achieve an optimum outcome.
• Highly skilled in reporting informally and formally at multi-disciplinary meetings on patients' functional performance, to members of the multi-disciplinary team.
• Ability to work as an autonomous clinician at all times using own initiative for the day to day treatment of patients and management of the team.
• Ability to analyse professional and ethical issues and to advise or support others.
• Ability to reflect and critically appraise own performance, and to coach others in the development of these skills.
• Ability to access complex information from a variety of sources and to evaluate and implement as required.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Highly developed leadership and supervisory skills
• Developed training and presentation skills.
• IT skills to use internet, email, patient data systems and word processing
• To be able to work flexibly in order to be able to deal with a number of different tasks and situations simultaneously and interchange between tasks and situations quickly and frequently during the day.
• Highly developed skills in manual handling (e.g. when positioning or transferring patients in preparation for and during treatment) and an ability to advise/train others on techniques.
• Ability to cope with emotional and distressing situations.
• Ability to meet the mobility requirements of the post.

Employer details

Employer name

North Bristol NHS Trust

Address

Southmead Hospital

Bristol

BS10 5NB

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

339-JKL4041