Assistant Practitioner

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust provides child and adult mental health services, learning disability, wellbeing, older people's and eating disorder services across Norfolk and Suffolk.

At any one time, around 23,000 people in Norfolk and Suffolk are receiving care and attention from the Trust. We believe in whole life care - seeing people in the context of their whole lives, understanding the importance of good physical health, friends, family, spirituality, culture, home, work, education and a sense of purpose and achievement to experience good mental health.

Nearly 3,800 full and part-time practitioners care for our service users in hospitals, in the community and in their own homes, whilst an additional 1,400+ staff provide non-clinical support, including cleaning, catering, delivering supplies, ward administration, information technology, human resources and financial services.

We are committed to delivering quality driven mental health services. Every individual makes a valuable contribution. We are proud of our staff who have been commended for the care they provide. Do you value working positively, respectfully and together? If so, we’d love you to join us

JOB DESCRIPTION/PERSON SPECIFICATION

YOUR APPLICATION

**Job overview**:
Secure services are looking for an enthusiastic Assistant Practitioner with a keen interest in working within a male ward.

You will be based on Catton Ward at Northside House.

This is a 7 day a week service 24 hours a day. It can be a challenging and demanding role that requires excellent communication skills and the ability to work closely alongside the MDT.

This is a unique opportunity for you to work alongside and under the supervision of a team of Registered Nurses/Professionals. In this role there is scope to develop your knowledge, skills and ability in all areas of clinical care.

Ideally, you will have experience of working within mental health services. You will be an excellent communicator, self-motivated and committed to delivering a high standard of care.

**Main duties of the job**:

- Supporting the registered nurse in the running of a shift
- To act as the named nurse for a patient on the ward and coordinate the care for them
- Assess service users’ needs in conjunction with a registered professional.
- Able to work independently on own initiative to meet the needs of services users.
- Liaise and refer with external organisations as required promoting partnership. working to ensure holistic care.
- Ensure service users’ needs are accurately reflected in health record documentation.
- Assist service users and carers to access information and support.

**Working for our organisation**:
Benefits included with this role are:

- NHS pension
- a comprehensive in house & external training programmes
- Career progression
- Starter annual leave of 27 days per annum increasing to 33 days pa based on length of service (plus paid bank holidays)
- Staff physio service
- NHS discounts and many more.

Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing their experiences and learning from each other.

**Detailed job description and main responsibilities**:

- Able to work within multi-disciplinary team.
- Recognise the importance of service user and carer involvement in delivery of care.
- Able to develop relationships and networks with internal and external agencies and services.
- Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex, sensitive information to a wide variety of professionals in a variety of methods.
- Provide updates and reports as required related to service users’ needs and care both written and verbal.
- Work within Trust Policy in all matters related to communication of clinical risk, including the need for information sharing.
- Clearly understand the issues surrounding confidentiality.
- Act consistently with legislation, policies, procedures and other quality approaches and promotes the values of quality approaches to others.
- Practice within the professional boundaries and code of practice for Assistant Practitioners.
- Recognise own level of competency and act and seek support when limitations of knowledge or competency are identified.
- Maintain practice through further study, research, clinical practice and personal development.
- Work unsupervised and organise own workload and work in a manner which maintains and promotes quality.
- Keep accurate records in accordance with Trust Policies.
- Support day to day running of services including co-ordination of staff and daily tasks and training and mentoring of junior staff.
- Provide leadership for junior staff including supervision; appraisal; and line management.
- Maintain quality in own work and encourage others to do so.
- Equality and Diversity.
- Act in ways that support equality and value diversity.
- Support, promote and value equality and diversity.
- Develop a culture that promotes equality and