Job overview

We are looking for Band 6 Registered Mental Health Nurse to join our Inpatient service team. Our nurses at the Cassel are known as Psychosocial Nurses, who work alongside the patients rather than doing for the patient. 

We are a NHS Tier 4 Specialist Personality Disorder Service, that offers treatment to adults with severe & complex personality & trauma related symptoms. It is recognised as a centre of excellence & specialization, offering a unique combination of psychoanalytic psychotherapy & psychosocial nursing in a therapeutic community setting, complemented by group activities. 

The inpatient treatment programme comprises three main components: (1) a living & learning environment/ the community; (2) Psychosocial Nursing &; (3) individual & group psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The approach is relational & all aspects of the treatment are managed & facilitated through a psychodynamic understanding of relationships & the use of self.

Main duties of the job

The Cassel works with the principle of a Culture of Enquiry: questioning & developing our practice daily at the Cassel.  We embrace the opinions & thoughts of all our staff to contribute to an understanding about the patients & the dynamics in the staff team.  The work requires nurses to be to use their feelings to help the patient understand the impact of living & working alongside them. Nurses work by making sense & thinking about the intense feelings evoked in themselves, using the robust reflective spaces. 

The work involves containing patients & their risk through providing an emotionally containing environment rather than putting them on observations or prioritising the use of pharmacological interventions & not using restraining. 

The psychosocial nurses co-facilitate groups that are facilitated by patients & nurses. The shift pattern allows opportunities to work autonomously & create “space” to get alongside the patient. 

Nurses support patients manage their lives outside the hospital as patients go home during the weekends. Helping the patient is to integrate the understanding of their internal world with the external, through the containment of the hospital.

Working for our organisation

West London NHS Trust is one of the most diverse healthcare providers in the UK, delivering a range of mental health and physical healthcare and community services. The Trust runs Broadmoor Hospital, one of three high secure hospitals in the country, with an international reputation.

Our high secure services care for patients from South of England and we provide low and medium secure services across eight London boroughs. The Trust also provides mental and physical healthcare in three London boroughs (Ealing, Hounslow and   Hammersmith & Fulham).  We employ over 5,000 staff, of whom 59% are BME. Our turnover for 2024-25 is over £500m.

The Trust is rated as ‘Good’ overall by the Care Quality Commission. Forensic services are rated as ‘Outstanding’.

The Trust is an established partner and contributor in the development of the evolving North West London Integrated Care System and the Integrated Care Board. The Trust leads the NW London Children and Adolescent Mental Health provider collaborative