Nursing

As a specialist nurse in organ donation, or SNOD, you will have one of the most challenging and rewarding positions in NHSBT. As you look after our donors and their families and help save and improve the lives of others.

You'll provide an exceptional level of end-of-life care to dying patients. You will support their families and facilitate conversations about organ donation.

When you start you'll have around six months of training and when you complete your training, you'll be responsible for representing NHSBT in your embedded trust, providing teaching to hospital staff, performing audits and report writing as well as assessing potential donors on our 24/7 on call rotor.

This will include attending the hospital and planning with the medical teams. You will have the support of medical teams and discussions will only start when the family are fully accepting of their loved one’s death or futility.

This is when the relationship between you and a family will grow. Once consent or authorisation for organ donation is in place, you'll then start to work with the family, medical teams and sometimes the Coroner or Procurator Fiscal to complete a full medical and social history of their loved one.

Families may also agree to donating their loved one’s tissues, and this will be coordinated by our Specialist Nurses in Tissue Donation.

When all the information is collected and approved, details will be transferred to all Transplanting Centres around the UK. You can use this time with families to collect keepsakes and carry out any other end-of-life requests that they may have.

You will then coordinate and plan with the family, the hospital and the Transplant Centre until you accompany the donor to Theatre and arrange the final transportation of the organs.

You will gain so many transferable skills from this role whilst also using your clinical skills. We are expert coordinators and communicators, and all whilst managing patients at the end of life. This role is extremely fulfilling.

Transplant and donation is a very humbling and fulfilling area to work in. And amongst the sadness there are good news stories every day.

The Patient Blood Management team work with hospitals across the NHS to promote and support the implementation of alternatives to blood component use, and support safe and appropriate transfusion processes.

Your training will be tailored to your needs and you will have a personal mentor for the first six months and regular contact with managers and team members. As a PBM practitioner, you'll need to develop an in depth, rich understanding of safe transfusion processes from both a practical clinical and laboratory perspective.

The ability to communicate with hospitals and influence their patient blood management activities is key. You'll have a supportive, multi disciplinary team to help you develop and progress.

As a newly appointed expert in everything Patient Blood Management, you'll want to enthusiastically share your knowledge of best practice by supporting the development and update of patient information leaflets, clinical toolkits, educational events, teaching and training, audits and benchmarking, and professional publications.

NHSBT provides so many opportunities to develop and expand your skills and knowledge, including the potential to attend external courses, undertake apprenticeships and participate in professional conferences.

Self-directed development is strongly encouraged, and keeping yourself up to date is vital for the role of a PBM practitioner. Managing your own diary allows you to schedule time for learning and development.

All of this will provide you with significant specialist clinical knowledge and a wide range of management and Leadership skills that are highly transferable. You'll be equipped to continue your professional development and progress in a variety of senior, strategic, educational or clinical roles.

As a Blood Donation Nurse, you'll be joining a huge team responsible for looking after our 1.3 million registered donors. You will ensure that these incredible people receive the highest standard of nursing care at all times. You'll love this role.

When you join us, you will have a six-week induction where you'll become an expert in blood donation. There is a Nurse Academy and you'll learn in both a classroom and clinical setting.

You'll be the clinical lead on a blood donation session. And this requires strong leadership skills to support and supervise a team of highly trained donor carers. You'll also use your clinical decision-making skills to establish that donors are actually eligible to donate. Some people have an adverse reaction after donating blood, so you'll need to be there for them too.

At some of our donor sessions, you'll be required to work alone as the only clinician on session, but you'll always have the backup of the Clinical Support Team.

If you like being responsible and taking charge, then you will thrive in this environment. This role within blood donation will give you lots of transferable skills, particularly in leadership and management.

You could become a Clinical Donor Centre Lead or Team Manager, or move into education, or work as a Regional Lead Nurse within the Nursing Care Quality Team. There are so many options and so many training opportunities available too.

And finally, a huge plus for most of our Blood Donation Nurses is that there are no night shifts. Your work-life balance will never have felt so good!

The Therapeutic Apheresis Services team, or TAS team, carry out apheresis procedures, which involve removing or collecting components of blood from patients and donors using cell separator technology. This incredible service supports those needing bone marrow and stem cell transplants, and conditions such as sickle cell disease.

Our TAS team is highly specialised and you'll start your journey in a cohort of others learning through modules based in the classroom and in clinical settings. There is also an Education Team who will give you one-to-one training, so you'll be in great hands and have time to learn.

Some of our teams are based in acute trusts and others from NHSBT centres. Flexible working and being on call are a requirement of this role. You’ll be an autonomous and competent practitioner in apheresis, supporting our colleagues in the wider NHS.

Apheresis treatments are provided to children and adult patients referred to us from NHS clinical teams across England and Wales, and from a variety of specialties, including Haematology, Neurology, Renal, Dermatology, Hepatology, Oncology and Rheumatology.

We treat approximately 2000 adults and children every year, from eight dedicated therapeutic units across the country. You'll have a unique role where you'll work with both patients and healthy donors.

It can be exhilarating working as part of a 24/7 on-call service for acute patient referrals. You'll see first hand how providing life-saving and life-enhancing therapeutic apheresis treatments really impacts both adults and children.

We are the only organisation outside of London that works with all three UK donor registries. You'll be joining a highly specialised team and the ethos of continued learning is evident as we support you with everything from CPD to Master’s programs. You'll become an expert in apheresis and the doors to more senior roles will quickly open for you.

Plasma for Medicine is a new directorate at NHSBT and as a PfM nurse you'll inspire your team to provide exceptional and safe care for our donors and their donated plasma.

Our Plasma Collection Team is playing a pivotal role in the delivery of plasma through cell separation, making life-saving treatment for patients in the UK. When you join us, you'll undertake an extensive induction and training program and receive continuous development, including academic opportunities to support you in your current role and to achieve your career ambitions.

When your training finishes, you'll be leading the day-to-day management of our Plasma Collection Team, safely delivering sufficient supply to meet our patients’ needs. You'll be responsible for ensuring that the plasma product safely meets the requirements of manufacturing practice, and use your expertise to check donor eligibility and make clinical decisions, to ensure the safety of our donors.

You'll need a great team around you, and that starts with you. You will be a mentor to your team, to provide support, training and leadership to further their development and performance.

By being a role model, you'll drive change and improve services and safety. You'll be involved in really exciting innovative practices and have an everyday opportunity to help us to shape the future of plasma for medicine.