Neonatal Community Sister​/Charge Nurse

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

The closing date is 29 September 2026

As a Senior Sister/Charge Nurse, you will play a pivotal role in leading your ward or department, ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality, patient-centred care. You will provide visible leadership, manage a defined caseload, coordinate the day-to-day running of the clinical area and work closely with multidisciplinary teams and external partners to ensure seamless care delivery.

Working within a seven-day service, you will be responsible for staffing, resource management, clinical standards and service performance. You will support, supervise and develop staff and students, fostering a culture of learning, accountability and continuous improvement. Through effective leadership and workforce planning, you will ensure the efficient deployment of staff and resources while maintaining the highest standards of care.

The successful candidate will be a compassionate and motivated professional who leads by example, champions equality, diversity and inclusion, and is dedicated to supporting colleagues to achieve their full potential. You will actively drive quality improvement initiatives, promote patient safety and ensure compliance with Trust policies, procedures and the NMC Code of Conduct.

This is an excellent opportunity to make a lasting impact on patient outcomes, staff experience and service development while contributing to our mission of delivering exceptional care with kindness, expertise and respect.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Clinically experienced neonatal care nurse

Act as an expert healthcare practitioner demonstrating advanced clinical skills, knowledge and decision making beyond those associated with the general multidisciplinary team

Maintain and further develop own expert nursing practice skills, abilities and through effective role modelling ensure that the professional practice of colleagues is continually developed and enhanced.

Work closely alongside neonatal, midwifery and obstetric teams to provide specialist nursing advice and leadership using expert knowledge, practice and critical judgement skills continually seek to identify areas of care where current practices could be changed or modified to improve patient/parent outcomes.

To facilitate discharge of neonates providing initial support in the family home

To liaise with the multidisciplinary team in relation to the discharge and follow up of neonates

Liaise with Social Services where social circumstances raise concerns

Develop, maintain and promote robust bereavement pathways, ensuring all parents are offered choice/equitable access to bereavement support.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides hospital services to a growing population of around 700,000 people living across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas across two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Both hospital sites offer key services such as A&E, Obstetrics-led Maternity and Paediatrics. You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff.

As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology available.

Our values

We not only recruit based on qualifications and experience - we recruit individuals who demonstrate the behaviours which underpin our Trusts core values. We achieve this by using values based recruitment. We are dedicated to making our recruitment practices as inclusive as possible for everyone, we are committed to promoting equality and diversity, and creating a culture that values differences.

Please note that vacancies may close prior to the advertised closing date when sufficient number of applications have been received. All new staff will be subject to a probationary period covering first 6 months in post. Travel between hospital sites may be required. Please review all documents attached to ensure you familiarize yourself with all requirements of the job

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