Tobacco Dependency Advisor

Tobacco Dependency Advisor

Here at Worcestershire Acute NHS Trust, we have the exciting opportunity for a new member to join our established team on a 2 year fixed term contract. You will be responsible for delivering personalised stop smoking support, behavioural therapy and managing nicotine replacement therapy. You will be supporting our maternity inpatient and outpatient clinics across the county and occasionally some home visits.

Job description

Key Duties:

Delivering 1:1 Maternity Tobacco Dependency interventions

To support pregnant women and postnatal women to adopt healthy lifestyles and provide specialist smoking cessation advice in a tactful way across a variety of different formats including face-to-face, virtual and telephone consultations, recognising its a challenging lifestyle change which will require persuasive skillls.

To support and guide pregnant women and their families to access stop smoking advice, information, and support.

Have a sound knowledge of the available NRT, advise women and their families about strengths and dosage and ensure continued supply.

Deliver behavioural support and provide NRT to support the woman to remain smoke free, this may include a number of individual support sessions.

To work collaboratively with midwifery colleagues to ensure smoking and tobacco related health improvement information is available.

To provide evidenced-based smoking cessation advice within the hospital, home and community setting, which will require travel.

Manage incoming referrals to the in-house Maternity Tobacco Dependency Service.

Manage outgoing referrals to Local Tobacco Dependency Providers after pregnancy.

Co-ordinate and manage own caseload, clinics and home visits.

Ensure that smoking status and treatment plans are inputted correctly into electronic patient record.

To implement procedures within Maternity and be pro-active in bringing change to the smoking pathway.

To be aware of the hospitals policies with reference to fire, accident reporting, infection control and health and safety.

Communicate regular updates to the Line manager, this could include sensitive and complex information.

Identify and immediately report any concerns about the woman and babys health and wellbeing to the named Midwife or Team Leader.

To establish good relations with all grades of staff to ensure that effective communication is maintained.

Provide expertise and advice to other staff on Tobacco Dependency policies, treatments, and pathways.

To work in a manner that always protects confidentiality.

To keep stock of and re-order Nicotine Replacement Therapy for service users, in accordance with local policy.

Deliver Carbon Monoxide (CO) monitoring to a high standard and support CO screening in clinical practice within the multi-disciplinary team.

Complete relevant documentation in relation to CO testing in the maternity records.

Support and manage a caseload of patients and develop individually tailored support plans including recommending treatments based on assessed needs.

General Duties

Attitudes and responsibilities:

Demonstrate understanding of the importance of working in partnership with women and their families respecting their wishes and forming positive relationships.

Convey an approachable and professional manner to all mothers and their families.

Demonstrates awareness of discriminatory attitudes and challenge this behaviour to promote equality. An awareness of protected characteristics including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation (Equality Act 2010) and recognise how to support people from these groups.

Communicate information clearly and effectively using verbal and nonverbal communication skills, to women and their families and all members of the multi-disciplinary team.

Communicate information in a clear, accurate, unambiguous, and timely manner, ensuring that the woman and her family have understood. Adhering to medicines management as directed in regard to stop smoking medications.

Demonstrates courage to challenge areas of concern and treats individuals with dignity, respecting individual beliefs, culture, values, and preferences.

Contribute to the development of systems to promote knowledge, understanding and adherence to legislation, standards, policies, protocols, and values that underpin national and local provision of health and care.

Ensure the health and safety of the team by assuming collective responsibility for team risk assessment, precautions, and escalation of concerns.

Ensure that knowledge of local adult and child safeguarding policy and procedures are maintained.

Report all concerns to an appropriately trained practitioner in a timely manner, in accordance with local and national safeguarding pathways determined by the employer

Understands the challenges of providing integrated care for women and their families and can demonstrate initiative and leadership where required.

To be flexible with working hours to be able to support service user needs. To be available to work across county in order to support the team where necessary.

Work with indirect, minimal supervision operating at all times within own level of competence, escalating to team leader or Public Health midwife when appropriate.

Administrative Duties:

Ensure that all clinical documentation written or electronic is accurately and confidentially collected, updated, stored, and filed in accordance with local information governance and record keeping policy and guidance.

Keep complete, clear, accurate and contemporaneous records utilising digital platforms.

Organise, plan and manage own workload, involving face to face, clinic and home visits, and virtual appointments which will require short term adjustments.

Responsible for inputting data into one or more IT systems, monitoring, and reporting data in relation to smoking and quit rates.

Under the indirect supervision of the community team leader and/or Public Health midwife manage a caseload of maternal smokers, prioritising own workload according to the needs of the service and individual caseload.

Arrange follow up appointments throughout the course of the treatment plan, tracking and modifying treatment plans

Understands and gains valid consent prior to action or providing care and records this consent.

Provide and monitor care:

Provide compassionate, safe, and effective assessment and advice to service users within the maternity service

Monitor the quit attempts of people within their care, providing follow up and evaluation in partnership with people, families, and carers.

Contribute to ongoing assessment of Tobacco Dependency recognising when it is necessary to refer to others for reassessment or further advice.

Communicate effectively with colleagues, providing clear verbal, digital or written information and instructions when sharing information delegating or handing over responsibility for care. To ensure that Tobacco Dependency records are kept up to date and accurate.

Recognise and report any situations, behaviours or errors that could result in poor care outcomes.

Training Responsibilities:

Attend all and actively participate in statutory and mandatory training as and when required.

Identify own training and development needs and undertake appropriate training/education as required to ensure a contemporaneous knowledge base and skill set is maintained.

Actively seek feedback related to personal performance to enhance own practice, by participating in annual individual performance review process, whereby objectives will be agreed, performance monitored, and personal development needs discussed.

Awareness of the research that informs evidence-based practice.

Health Safety & Security:

To have an awareness and recognition of child protection and domestic violence issues and report these concerns to appropriate health professionals, under the guidance of a midwife.

To have an awareness and understanding of the infection control policy and how to minimise risk.

Recognise and respond appropriately to urgent and emergency situations within the remit of the advisory role.

Senior Tobacco Dependence Advisers are well placed to identify mental health needs early and, where appropriate, should escalate any concerns to a senior member of the team.

Ensure compliance with policies, procedures and clinical guidelines.

Dealing with rare verbal aggression from patients.

To understand safe storage of NRT and comply with legislation surrounding provision of such.

Health Promotion:

Understands how social and cultural influences, individual circumstances, capabilities, behaviours and lifestyle choices impact on health outcomes and the importance of health promotion to improve health outcomes.

Applies principles of behaviour change within individualised context to enable personalised discussion sensitively communicating complex and potentially challenging information to facilitate change including smoking cessation: for example, assess CO levels and signposting to local service appropriately as per policy guidance.

Educate women about the benefits of stopping smoking in pregnancy and give support to those women who want to quit developing an individualised support plan including treatment.

Promote smoke free homes and advise women and their families about second-hand smoke.

To complete the relevant documentation for all carbon monoxide testing performed in the maternity records.

Support people to improve and maintain their mental, physical, behavioural health and wellbeing and signpost to relevant services where appropriate.

Active involvement in the prevention of and protection against disease and ill health.

Engage in public health, community development and in the reduction of health inequalities.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential

• GCSE level English and Mathematics or equivalent.
• NVQ Level 3 or equivalent in health-related studies.
• OR substantial successful experience delivering stop smoking interventions and support.
• NCSCT trained Stop Smoking Practitioner.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• A good level of understanding of evidence-based practice in relation to smoking cessation, the consequences of smoking and benefits to quitting.
• An understanding of human behaviour that contributes to making healthy lifestyle changes and decisions.
• The ability to build and maintain effective working relationships with professionals/individuals from a variety of different professional backgrounds.
• Excellent communication skills (both written and verbal) and listening skills.
• Good organisational skills and the ability to prioritise workload and coordinate own schedule without direct supervision.

Experience

Essential

• Experience of providing healthcare advice or promoting healthy lifestyle advice to patients or members of the public.
• Experience of working in health, social care, and other support roles in direct contact with people, families, or carers (in a paid or voluntary capacity).
• Experience of providing help, support and/or counselling on either a one-to-one basis or as part of a group setting.
• Experience of working within multi-professional team environments.
• Experience of delivering tobacco dependence treatment.
• Experience of developing and delivering successful health promotion interventions.
• Experience of working with vulnerable people

About the employer

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is a large acute and specialised hospital trust that provides a range of local acute services to the residents of Worcestershire and more specialised services to a larger population in Herefordshire and beyond.

The Trust operates hospital-based services from three sites in Kidderminster, Redditch and Worcester

Our workforce is more than 7,000 strong, and our caring staff are recognised as providing good and outstanding patient-centred care. You could be one of them.

We are committed to recruiting the best people to work with us. Our values, which we ask all staff to demonstrate, underpin our everyday work and remain firmly at the heart of all we do.

Being open and honest

Ensuring people feel cared for

Showing respect to everyone

We are committed to developing a culture of continuous improvement by embedding the principles of our Improvement System.

We are proud to have achieved Timewise accreditation - this means we are committed to embedding flexible working within our organisation as a flex positive employer.

DBS Checks and Costs

Any applicants who are offered posts requiring a DBS check as part of their employment check will have the cost of this check (at the current rate) deducted from their salary. Please see link in Supporting Information section for more details on DBS checks and costs.