Acute Oncology Nurse Advisor (AONA)

at  The Christie NHS Foundation Trust

The Christie hotline is a 24/7 telephone service which provides specialist advice and support to all Christie cancer patients as well as to their carers and community doctors and nurses. It is important for patients and their carers to have access to this service to manage side effects and any complication of treatment.
The team is a group of specialist nurse advisors with extensive oncology and haematology experience.
Acute oncology experience is desirable and oncology experience is essential.
The successful candidate will be an effective team player with excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
To provide telephone triage assessments for calls to the acute oncology management service (incorporating the hotline).
To give advice to patients/carers for patients who are experiencing problems following systemic anti-cancer treatments.
To liaise with all services involved in the patient’s cancer journey both within the Christie, other local hospitals in the region and in the community.
The hotline team is a friendly and welcoming team who work closely and have good relationships with a wide range of departments across the trust including both inpatient and outpatient clinical settings.
We work in close contact with the patient flow team who provide a 24 hour access to the trust as well as the acute ambulatory care unit and acute assessment unit.
As an innovative and forward-thinking team we are always looking to improve operations for the benefit of our patients and colleagues so welcome and new and exciting ideas.
We promote a healthy work-life balance and understand that cancer care is a challenging field and our friendly team work closely together to adopt a supportive culture. The trust also offers free and confidential counselling support and discounted onsite treatments from our complimentary therapy team.
We are dedicated to our staff development and invest in your career development with access to further education and training opportunities for your progression.
1.1 Provide 24/7 telephone helpline service to enable patients to access expert advice and management with the side effects of their treatments.
1.2 Communicate with patients and/or their carers regarding their care management dealing with highly sensitive information requiring sympathy and reassurance and where there are often barriers to understanding.
1.3 Assess patient provided information and provide appropriate and safe advice on a range of clinical issues.
1.4 Make clinical judgements from caller information, evaluating alternative courses of action.
1.5 Organise workload to ensure all calls are answered in a timely manner.
1.6 Ensure that all computerised records are accurate and kept up to date.
1.7 Liaise with the multi-disciplinary team with respect to the management of the critically ill patient.
1.8 Ensure effective communication between patients, their families and the healthcare team in order to maintain continuity of care and that appropriate and consistent information is conveyed to patients and their families.
1.9 Ensure effective and timely communications with the Acute Oncology Management teams at local hospitals is maintained.
1.10 Maintain links with specialist nurses and with GPs and nursing teams in the community to ensure continuity of care.

TRAINING & EDUCATION

4.1 Complete appropriate clinical skills and mandatory training as directed by management.
4.2 Participate and undertake research and audit which will influence practice.
4.3 To be up to date in all IV training programs including annual updates and competent in all areas of clinical practice including medicines management, moving and handling, assessment of critically ill patient and basic life support.
4.4 Attend all mandatory study days
4.5 Maintain awareness and competency within the role against national and regional initiatives and subsequently implement these initiatives into practice.
4.6 Act as a link nurse as directed by management and support the team through this role

Please refer the Job description for details