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Job Overview
This role involves providing spiritual care across the Trust in clinical and non-clinical area to patients, carers, staff and volunteers. It includes responding to referrals, but also a proactive presence, particularly in palliative areas and maternity loss. It is part of a 7-day a week Chaplaincy presence, with a shared rota for evening and weekend on-call from home, providing an urgent response service across Bristol NHS Group. Working as a team is key within the Spiritual, Pastoral and Religious Care Service and alongside colleagues throughout the organisation, seeking to uphold the Trust values.
Main duties of the job
This is an opportunity for a chaplain or spiritual care practitioner who wants to take the next step in delivering spiritual, pastoral, and religious care in a hospital environment.
North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) has recently created a new Hospital Group with University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW). As we develop a single managed chaplaincy service across both Trusts, the opportunity has arisen for this fixed term post for a Chaplain until the end of March 2026, with a possible extension.
Under the direction of the Lead Chaplain, you will be a spiritual, pastoral, and religious care practitioner (chaplain), responsible for enabling, facilitating, promoting, providing, and contributing to the spiritual, pastoral, and religious care of people within the hospital community.
You will be based at Southmead Hospital and will participate in a Bristol wide out of hours on-call service delivering emergency spiritual, pastoral, and religious care to people across Bristol NHS Group.
We are looking to appoint a suitably qualified and skilled person who is ambitious to provide the best spiritual care possible. You will join a multi-faith SPaRC service where teamwork, personal development, professional practice, and a commitment to our Trust values are taken seriously and where you will contribute to the development and delivery of spiritual care in line with our SPaRC Strategic Plan.
Working for our organisation
North Bristol NHS Trust employs over 12,000 staff providing healthcare to the residents of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset from our award-winning hospital building at Southmead. We are the regional Major Trauma Centre, and an internationally recognised centre of excellence in a range of services and major specialities. Our vision is that by enabling our teams to be the best that they can be, we will provide exceptional healthcare, personally delivered.
North Bristol NHS Trust values all people as individuals. We aim to be an anti-discriminatory organisation and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We welcome applicants from all underrepresented groups.
Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities
- An autonomous, qualified practitioner (chaplain) whose role is to seek out and respond to the SPaRC needs of individuals, carers, family, visitors, volunteers, and staff while remaining accountable to the lead chaplain for all aspects of their duties and decisions.
- Seek to establish relationships of trust and support with all those in the post-holder’s care, identifying SPaRC needs and responding to them.
- Engage in the assessment, delivery, enablement, monitoring and recording of person-centred SPaRC which holistically addresses the individual and collective needs of the hospital community.
- Providing or facilitating safe, effective, compassionate, responsive, and continuing care and interventions that addresses the identified holistic SPaRC needs of people including those with highly complex situations to support healing and wholeness, within the parameters of the role and in accordance with professional codes of conduct and clinical governance.
- Respond to people in spiritual distress including those who may show challenging behaviours or have highly complex needs by assessing, analysing, advising, providing, receiving, and responding to them using professional and pastoral knowledge, skills, and practice.
- Take active steps to work with, involve and support people in addressing their own healthcare needs, maximising their potential healing and wholeness within the limits of their illness.
- Provide, enable, or facilitate within the limitations of the post-holder's religion/belief and faith authority, religious rites, services, and ceremonies as may be requested or required. This may include prayer, baptism, blessing, naming, recitations, and other rites at times when patients, including children and babies, may be facing complex surgery, approaching the end of life, after death, or following baby loss during pregnancy or soon after.
- Participate in a 24-hour, 7 day per week SPaRC emergency on call service shared with UHBW aiming to respond within 1 hour and provide SPaRC support as required during any Major Incidents subject to separate or prior agreement.
- Arrange, conduct, or advise on emergency marriages in hospital according to national, legal, endorsing faith body, and Trust guidelines.
- Facilitate any religious need that is outside the scope of the post-holder's belief or authority.
- Arrange and conduct Trust funerals, especially for babies, as required, liaising with families, bereavement midwives, mortuary, Patient Affairs (bereavement administration team), ward staff and external providers such as Funeral Directors and Cemetery and Crematorium staff as appropriate. Respect and maintain client confidentiality, recording appropriate data and updating client records within Trust systems subject to consent and within legal and Trust frameworks for Information Governance.
- Contribute to a range of education and training initiatives including multi-faith teaching within the chaplaincy and hospital community.
- Develop and maintain constructive working relationships with multi-professional colleagues and faith communities to design, deliver and evaluate care and treatment across organisational, faith, and professional boundaries. This will include attendance at Multi-Disciplinary meetings.
- Demonstrate a pro-active commitment to team working, collaboration and development, including sharing knowledge, skills, and pastoral care for the benefit of all.
- Support SPaRC Chaplaincy Volunteers as required in agreement with the Lead Chaplain.
- Support hospital staff including at times of personal anxiety, crisis, loss, or bereavement as part of the staff wellbeing and support offering.
- Promote awareness about the availability and role of SPaRC services throughout the Trust.
- Help maintain the Sanctuary area at Gate 30 as a place for prayer, worship, meditation, reflection and peace, and as a resource centre for SPaRC
- Actively support, contribute, engage, and embed the SPaRC Strategic Plan, SPaRC workplans, service reviews and developments within the Hospital Group.
- Continually review and evaluate personal, team and departmental practices to ensure quality assured, evidence-based, and values-based care is offered.
- Undertake, engage with, evaluate, and apply relevant surveys, audits or research and reflective practice learning with other members of the SPaRC and healthcare teams to support best practice.
- Implement chaplaincy service policies and relevant Trust policies and contributes to the development on new departmental policies.
- Maintain compliance with Trust corporate induction, essential training requirements and appraisals, including annual update training and appropriate SPaRC training sessions as agreed from time to time.
- Participate and contribute to one to one, team meetings, reflective practice and appraisal meetings.
- Give attention to maintaining personal spirituality and beliefs and continuing personal development.
- Actively participate in and attend regular external Pastoral Supervision in accordance with a separate contract for this.
- Contribute to the wider Patient Experience Strategy and workplans.
- Maintain good standing and endorsement with the post holder’s faith body.
Person specification
Education/Training/Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Postgraduate certificate or diploma in healthcare chaplaincy or evidence of an equivalent accredited faith or belief qualification.
- A faith representative, able to be endorsed by their faith, belief or philosophical body, as laid out in the Network for Pastoral, Spiritual, and Religious Care in Health (NPSRCH).
- Evidence of Continuing Personal Development (CPD).
Desirable criteria
- Registered with the UK Board of Healthcare Chaplains
Work Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience in providing pastoral ministry within their own faith, belief or philosophical community context including support for people with complex needs.
- Experience in responding to people with spiritual problems encountered in sickness, dying, death and bereavement.
- Experience or understanding of delivering SPaRC to people of any belief or non-belief within a hospital context
Desirable criteria
Knowledge/Skills/Abilities
Essential criteria
- Knowledge of a range of world faiths, belief, non-belief or multifaith issues and perspectives that impact SPaRC within a hospital context
- Understanding of inclusive person-centred, spiritual care which can reach the whole organisation, staff, volunteers, patients, and their visitors.
- Good interpersonal, communication, and listening skills, with a keen self-awareness, and an un-shockable constitution.
- Ability to work in complex and/or stressful situations with exposure to highly distressing or emotional circumstances and to maintain personal resilience
- Competent in IT skills and literacy, ability to use Microsoft 365 software, and able to input and interrogate data using hospital systems.
- Ability to work on-call and participate in a 24/7 Bristol wide shared emergency on-call service
Personal qualities and aptitudes
Essential criteria
- Demonstrates personal standards and values that conform to the Health Care Chaplains Code of Conduct as published by the UK Board of Healthcare Chaplaincy (UKBHC) and support the Trust Values.
- Provides care and treatment without discrimination in ways that respects and values diversity regardless of difference including but not limited to age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, maternal status, race, ethnicity or diversity of religion, belief and non-belief.
- Maintains a professional, calm, empathic, sensitive, caring, and compassionately respectful approach when working in stressful and emotional situations within a busy environment.
If you apply for this vacancy and have not received a communication from North Bristol NHS Trust within three weeks of the closing date, please assume that on this occasion your application has been unsuccessful.
Please note that North Bristol NHS Trust does not reimburse travel expenses relating to interview attendance.
If you feel you meet the requirements of the Disability Act / Two Ticks scheme and require further support/advice, please contact us on tel 0117 414 1151.
North Bristol NHS Trust are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
The successful applicant(s) will normally commence at the minimum of the scale unless they have previous NHS service at the same band. Progression through the scale is by annual increments.
At North Bristol Trust (NBT), we know diverse and inclusive environments lead to happier and healthier teams and improved patient care and outcomes. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are currently underrepresented in NBT’s workforce at Band 8a and above. These include people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, disabled people and LGBTQIA+ people.
Please note that stringent pre-employment checks are undertaken on all successful applicants prior to commencement in post.
