Specialist Cancer Support Worker

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Key Responsibilities and Duties:

Clinical:

·        Provide regular supported conversations with the person living with cancer, assessing their holistic needs, and supporting them to self-manage by providing relevant information and advice, and signposting to other Macmillan resources and services available to meet their identified needs

·        Following a holistic needs assessment, co-ordinate care and development of a personalised care plan with the person living with cancer so they can access the right help at the right time and providing a personalised response to any changes in need

·        Provides practical and emotional support to people living with cancer and their families.  Recognising information needs may change over time and working with the person to ensure they have all the information and support they need at all stages of their cancer journey

·        Assess and interpret the needs of individuals attending/contacting the service and respond effectively to the needs of individuals providing a professional quality service

·        Triage individuals contacting the service face to face or by telephone / email and work autonomously to prioritise needs and initiate appropriate responses according to protocols and individual pathways

·        Deal with difficult and highly emotive situations in a sensitive manner using a high degree of empathy, understanding, diplomacy, integrity and base decisions on own judgement

·        Act autonomously in managing emotive and complex situations and know when to seek help

·        Demonstrate the ability to recognise and respond appropriately when faced with a sudden deterioration or an emergency situation, altering the team or enabling rapid response as appropriate

·        Provide information and signposting to other supportive services and liaise with clinical staff to support patients and carers in distress

·        Be responsible for own workload, providing clinical advice within sphere of own knowledge and seek expertise as required

·        Able to be adaptable, multitask and prioritise under pressure working in an acute busy environment

·        Work unsupervised, with the ability to respond to situations without prior warning

·        Respond to any queries from patients, carers and visitors providing verbal and written information in a timely manner

·        Ensure that situations or enquiries requiring specialist intervention are referred appropriately and in a timely manner

·        Implement, monitor and review the care plan with the patient and carer, in line with standard operating procedures and protocols and modify as appropriate under the supervision of the Clinical Nurse Specialist

·        Identify the complexity of the situation, providing appropriate advice and escalating to the registered practitioner where appropriate

·        Co-ordinate the care for a defined group of patients providing direct (e.g. face to face and telephone) communication with patients, relatives, carers, and other health and social care professionals

·        Co-ordinate the necessary assessments, appointments or investigations to fast track people back into the system if required

·        Channelling and co-ordination of the patient follow-up pathway ensuring robust communication between medical staff, GPs, patients, relatives, members of the public and other disciplines within the Trust and close liaison with the community staff and oncology teams

·        Coach patients and carers on how to make contact when they feel that their condition or needs have changed, including what to do out of hours

·        Planning / inviting / organising of Health and Well-Being events or other supported self-management clinics

·        Co-ordinate remote surveillance and monitoring through appointments for investigations and feedback of results for non-complex cases

·        Understand that there will be frequent exposure to distressing / highly distressing situations and when to seek appropriate support / advice

·        Demonstrate an awareness of the limits of own practice and knowledge and when to seek appropriate support / advice

·        Co-ordinate the handover with other teams to facilitate safe and effective transition of care between services

·        Act as advocate and facilitator to resolve issues that may be perceived as barriers to care

·        Maintain confidentiality at all times in line with Trust and Data Protection policies

Organisational

·        Act as a role model by maintaining credibility across the Trust, the wider health care community and external agencies, ensuring a positive image of the Trust is maintained

·        Ensure compliance with Trust policies, procedures and guidelines, taking action / alerting the Clinical Nurse Specialist if practice appears to contravene policy, or if concerned about any aspect of patient care

·        Participate in meetings internally or externally to the Trust, relevant to specialist area of practice, proactively contributing to the meeting by providing advice and expertise in own specialist area

·        Support the team in the effective use of resources, e.g. budget, supplies and material

·        Maintain systems and processes to promote a healthy, safe and secure working environment, ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, maintaining accurate documentation and reporting any concerns

·        Contribute to the development and maintenance of relationships with other departments, wards within the Trust and external agencies, charities, and regional cancer centres

·        Work collaboratively with clinical / non-clinical services internal and external to the organisation to provide a seamless service which is responsive to individual patient’s needs

·        Liaise with all members of the extended MDT to aid facilitation of a collaborative approach to the care of the patient

·        Be flexible in approach, able to exercise initiative and demonstrate a consistently high standard of professionalism, being aware of the need for confidentiality and integrity

·        Support and contribute to audit  processes, governance, research, clinical research trials and service development

·        Make sure that people affected by cancer are aware that they are interacting with a Macmillan professional and know about the full range of resources and services available through Macmillan

·        Actively engage with Macmillan Cancer Support to contribute expertise and experience and support the Macmillan Corporate Strategy

·        Participate in an annual review with the Macmillan Cancer Nurse Specialist and Macmillan Deputy Head of Nursing, Cancer & Palliative Care

Education

·        Demonstrate willingness to identify own learning and development needs and willing to undertake further study both formal and informal to meet these

·        Take responsibility for own learning and development by recognising and taking advantage of all opportunities learn, including full participation in appraisal, supervision, action learning

·        Promote, education cancer patients regarding ‘health and wellbeing’

·        Advise patients on individual self-care management principles and provide consistent planned aftercare to reinforce and further promote this information

·        Deliver patient-centred, self-management support and education as necessary to patients

·        Support the delivery of patient and carer training and education

·        Encourage and support active and health lifestyle choices

·        Coach patients and carers to understand what signs, symptoms and situations to be aware of that would indicate concern

·        Demonstrate self-directed learning, actively seeking role development opportunities to enhance practice, knowledge and role progression

·        Identify personal education needs and skills development with the registered practitioner

·        Under supervision of the CNS deliver patient-centred, support and education as necessary to patients.

Administrative

·        Document and monitor all aspects of care co-ordination and service delivery, supporting data collection on Macmillan Right by You acute performance metrics and how people living with cancer use the service, including care, support and facilities they access

·        Provide a wide range of administrative and clerical support to the clinical team including data collection, stock taking, report writing, including annual report and operational policy

·        Support the MDT process to ensure compliance with cancer performance standards and reduce delays in the diagnostic pathway

·        Support the information needs of the individual cancer teams e.g. Quality Surveillance programme

·        Assist the team to complete audits and respond to the findings to improve service delivery

·        Create and maintain databases which record all support and information activity and information resources

·        Liaise closely with the MDT co-ordinator ensuring robust systems of notification and where appropriate co-ordinate transfer of care

·        Ensure compliance with policies, procedures and clinical guidelines for self and others

·        Work with other co-ordinators across the region to adopt best practice

·        Use databases and computer packages to initiate and maintain records and generate statistics for analytical purposes

·        Co-ordinate the handover with other teams to facilitate safe and effective transition of care between services in order to provide seamless support for people

·        Document and monitor all aspects of care co-ordination and service delivery, supporting data collection for audit

·        The post holder will demonstrate excellent organisation skills.