Job title: Advanced Nurse Pracitioner

Reports to: 
The Partners (Clinically)
The Practice Manager (Administratively)

Hours:

Job Summary:

The Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) will act autonomously within their professional scope of practice providing care for patients face to face, telephone consultations and home visits.

The postholder will operate within their own sphere of competence and agreed acceptable limits of practice to provide expert professional clinical advice to patients, carers and colleagues, ensuring clinical safety and excellence.

The Advanced Nurse Practitioner will need to prioritise and triage the needs of patients accordingly, making any necessary referrals for investigations in the appropriate manner.

The postholder will use skills, knowledge and competencies as a qualified Advanced Nurse Practitioner in order to be responsible and accountable for managing patient caseloads for treatments, referral, admission and discharging patients as appropriate.

Job responsibilities:

Clinical Nursing Practice

• Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team to deliver safe and high quality care.
• Carries out clinical nursing practice at an advanced level using expert clinical skills, critical judgements & knowledge to deliver appropriate and safe care.
• Delivery of care in line with NSF, NICE guidelines and evidence-based care
• Triage and treat patients, performing specialist assessment of their needs and make referrals as necessary to other members of the primary and secondary health care teams as appropriate.
• Co-ordinate the planning and delivery of care ensuring patients and carers/relatives are involved.
• Prescribing and reviewing medication that is appropriate to patient needs and in accordance with latest evidence-based practice, national and practice protocols and within the scope of qualified practice.
• Diagnose and manage acute and chronic conditions, including drug and non-drug based treatment methods into a management plan.
• Request diagnostic investigations and interpret within agreed protocols e.g. x-ray, blood tests, scans, etc.
• Assess, diagnose and treat patients in practice premises or their own home who require medical attention and/or refer to appropriate agency.
• Refers patients to other members of the multi-disciplinary practice teams, secondary care organisations and other organisations as necessary.

Care Management

• Communicates confidential and sensitive information to patients, relatives and carers in relation to their condition.
• Provide highly specialised care advice beyond the scope of normal Nursing practice e.g. care treatment plans, making referrals as appropriate (including fast track referrals).
• Contribute to local and national practice targets clinical remit e.g. QOF, prescribing incentive scheme, National benchmarking.
• To monitor and meet care outcomes against standards and recommend or initiate changes as necessary.

Administration and professional responsibilities

• Produce accurate, contemporaneous and complete records of patient consultation, consistent with legislation, policies and procedures
• Participate in the administrative and professional responsibilities of the practice team
• Accurate and legible notes of all consultations and treatments are recorded in the patient’s notes
• Ensure clinical systems kept up to date, recording and/or amending accurate details
• Ensure accurate completion of all necessary documentation associated with patient health care and registration with the practice
• Attend and participate in practice meetings as required

Training and personal development

• Maintain up to date skills and knowledge, maintaining awareness of professional issues at an advanced level.
• Training needs will be monitored by yearly appraisal and will be in accordance with practice requirements. Personal development will be encouraged and supported by the practice.
• Assess effectiveness of care delivery through self-reflection and peer review, as well as benchmarking and formal evaluation.
• Contribute to the identification and assessment of learning needs of staff and other professionals and assist in planning effective programmes of education.
• Participate in the education and training of students of all disciplines and the introduction of all members of the practice staff where appropriate.
• Develop and maintain an in house nurse-training programme reporting to the practice manager.
• Act as a mentor for junior staff, assessing competence against set standards.
• Taking responsibility for own development, learning and performance and demonstrating skills and activities to others who are undertaking similar work and ensure own educational commitment is at least sufficient to maintain revalidation requirements.
• Develop and maintain a Personal Learning Plan.
• Regularly participate in clinical supervision.

Confidentiality:

In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust practice staff with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health and other matters.

• Comply with Legislation with regards to data protection act and ensure confidentiality is maintained at all times.
• The post-holder must regard all information relating to patients and their carers, practice staff and other healthcare workers (as well as information relating to the practice as a business organisation)  as strictly confidential
• Information relating to patients, carers, colleagues, other healthcare workers or the business of the practice may only be divulged to authorised persons in accordance with the practice policies and procedures relating to confidentiality, data protection legislation and the protection of personal and sensitive data, as well as other related healthcare legislation (e.g. the NHS Confidentiality Code of Practice) 

Health & Safety:

The post-holder will comply with practice policies, procedures and clinical guidelines for self and others. This includes (but not limited to):

• Identifying, reporting, and correcting health and safety hazards and infection hazards immediately when recognised
• Identifying issues and hazards / risks in relation to other work areas within the business
• Awareness of national standards of infection control and cleanliness, as well as ownership of infection control and clinically based patient care protocols and implementing them across the practice.
• Active observation of current working practices across the practice in relation to infection control, cleanliness and related activities, ensuring that procedures are followed and weaknesses / training needs are identified, escalating issues as appropriate.
• Identifying the risks involved in work activities, raising them with appropriate management and managing those risks across clinical and patient processes.
• Safe management of sharps procedures, including training, use, storage and disposal
• Keeping own work areas and general / patient areas generally clean, sterile, assuming responsibility in the maintenance of general standards of cleanliness across the business in consultation (where appropriate) with other managers
• Demonstrate due regard for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.
• Routine management of own team / team areas, and maintenance of work space standards:
  • Waste management, including collection, handling, segregation, container management, storage and collection
  • Spillage control procedures, management and training
  • Decontamination control procedures, management and training, and equipment maintenance

Equality and Diversity:

The post-holder will support the equality, diversity and rights of patients, carers and colleagues, to include:

• Acting in a way that recognizes the importance of people’s rights, interpreting them in a way that is consistent with practice procedures and policies, and current legislation
• Respecting the privacy, dignity, needs and beliefs of patients, carers and colleagues
• Identify patterns of discrimination and take action to overcome this and promote diversity and equality of opportunity.
• Behaving in a manner that is welcoming to and of the individual, is non-judgmental and respects their circumstances, feelings priorities and rights.
• Support people who need assistance in exercising their rights.

Quality:

The post-holder will strive to maintain quality within the practice, and will:

• Alert other team members to issues of quality and risk
• Assess own performance and take accountability for own actions, either directly or under supervision
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the team by reflecting on own and team activities and making suggestions on ways to improve and enhance the team’s performance
• Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patient’s needs
• Effectively manage own time, workload and resources

Communication:

The post-holder should recognize the importance of effective communication within the team and will strive to:

• Communicate effectively with other team members
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers
• Recognize people’s needs for alternative methods of communication and respond accordingly
• Ensure awareness of sources of support and guidance (e.g. PALS) and provide information in an acceptable format to all patients, recognising any difficulties and referring where appropriate.

Contribution to the implementation of services:

The post-holder will:

• Apply practice policies, standards and guidance
• Discuss with other members of the team how the policies, standards and guidelines will affect own work
• Participate in audit where appropriate.