Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The postholder will be part of Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust’s Tobacco Dependency Service, offering smoking cessation support to smokers using Walsall Manor Hospital services.

The Trust is committed to encouraging and supporting smokers in our services to quit. We recognise that tobacco dependency is a chronic, relapsing clinical condition that prematurely kills at least half of people who smoke. Smoking is seen as a medical condition that can be treated, rather than as a lifestyle choice.

To deliver this effectively, the successful applicant will need excellent communication, motivational and organisational skills and work as part of a tobacco dependency team. The Smoking Cessation Coordinators will work under agreed pathways and within defined competence. Working under supervised guidance, they will be expected to motivate and engage smokers attending the hospital’s day case departments, facilitate follow-up support and ensure effective handover of care to established community smoking cessation services.

Main Responsibilities

• Provide evidenced-based smoking cessation advice during consultations with patients
• Demonstrate and maintain knowledge of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products
• Support patients to stop smoking by providing information, and brief advice, on the effects of smoking on health, relating this to  patient’s presenting health conditions where applicable, assessing  patient’s smoking behaviour and readiness to stop smoking, and referring them to specialist smoking cessation services, either hospital based or community smoking cessation services, this forms the basis of the patient’s tobacco treatment care plan
• Work collaboratively with colleagues and partner organisations to ensure smoking and tobacco related health improvement information is available, collating patient data to share with community smoking cessation services, and the existing hospital-based Tobacco Dependency Service, to facilitate patient care by referring them to these services, as part of patient care planning
• Be aware of the Trust's policies with reference to fire, accident reporting, infection control and health and safety
• Establish good relations with all grades of staff to ensure that good communication is maintained
• Work in a manner that always protects confidentiality, assessments will be carried out with patients in the waiting area, where smoking cessation staff will move around, choosing the best area to maintain patient confidentiality, smoking cessation staff will be required to walk around the waiting area
• Work unsupervised at times during the day - if the Lead Smoking Cessation Coordinator is absent,  support from the Tobacco Dependency Service (TDS) will be available
• Prioritise own workload to ensure that individual patient needs take precedence over administration duties
• Use iPad/other tablet to collate patient information, and to process patient referrals
• Undertake administrative duties relating to assessments, referrals and team activity on specified software systems
• Act as a resource for smoking cessation knowledge and advice for colleagues within the emergency department of the hospital
• Support service lead in ensuring the on-going development of effective, evidence-based practice through the establishment and delivery of a programme of training and education for trust staff

Other Duties
The information supplied above is intended to summarise the key responsibilities and duties of the role. The post holder may be required from time to time to carry out other reasonable requests and duties as required, consistent with the responsibilities of their banding and development as agreed between employee and manager