Senior Ward Sister – Canterbury (Fixed term)

Pilgrims Hospices are looking for a Senior Ward Sister for our Canterbury Hospice. 

Join us in a pivotal leadership role where your expertise will shape exceptional palliative care. As a Senior Ward Sister within our inpatient unit, you’ll lead and inspire a dedicated team to deliver compassionate, person-centred care to patients and those important to them.

This is more than a ward leadership role – you’ll influence service development, drive quality improvement, and champion a culture of excellence, safety and learning. With a strong focus on both clinical leadership and team development, you’ll have the opportunity to mentor others, innovate, and contribute to the strategic direction of care across the organisation.

If you’re an experienced nurse leader passionate about making every moment matter, this is your opportunity to make a real and lasting difference.

About the role:

The Senior Ward Sister is a pivotal clinical leader within Pilgrims Hospices, responsible for inspiring and empowering nursing teams to deliver exceptional palliative care. Working collaboratively with the multidisciplinary team, the post holder will ensure that patients and their families receive holistic, compassionate, and evidence-based care tailored to their individual needs.

Main Duties:

• Provide strong, visible clinical leadership, acting as an expert resource and role model within the inpatient unit
• Ensure the delivery of high-quality, individualised, evidence-based care for patients and those important to them.
• Maintain oversight of clinical standards through regular review, audit, and evaluation of care delivery
• Lead on learning from incidents, complaints and feedback to continuously improve service quality and patient experience.
• Ensure timely escalation of significant clinical or operational concerns to senior leadership.
• Actively participate in ward rounds and multidisciplinary team meetings, contributing specialist expertise to complex clinical decision-making.
• Promote a culture of safety, proactively identifying and managing risks to patients, staff and visitors

This list is not exhaustive, please refer to the Job Description as attached below for more information.

This Band 7 role is full time 37.5h per week. Flexibility for shifts is essential, as the post holder will be required to do early, late, night and long day shifts. The post holder will be required to travel between hospice sites when required.

This role is fixed-term for 2 years. More information on our Modernisation of the Canterbury Hospice can be found as an attachment below. There is possibility for extension/permanency for this role.

Our Vision

“Of a community where people with a terminal illness and their family and friends are supported and empowered to live well in mind and body until the very last moment of their life”.

We recognise that our workforce is integral to the delivery of our Vision and our organisational and charitable aims. Pilgrims Hospices continues to create a highly skilled, motivated, engaged and healthy workforce by providing an environment where staff and volunteers feel highly motivated to perform their roles to a consistently high standard, and actively role model our organisational behaviours and values.

To achieve our Vision, we have a shared set of values and behaviours that enable us to be the people and the charity that patients and their loved ones need us to be. They form our CODE, which guides us in our daily working and decision making:

Compassionate We treat everyone with compassion and care

Open We communicate openly, honestly and effectively

Dynamic We are dynamic, improving and developing our service

Empowered We empower people to achieve their outcomes

Other benefits

As an Employer of Choice, our commitment to supporting our employees and volunteers is a key priority.

Our Health and Wellbeing Strategy is an important step in ensuring the sustainability of our workforce, and clearly outlines our strategic intentions to improve employee capability, resilience, and engagement, to adapt to and embrace change as the health sector continues to develop.

Our hospices offer:

• Modern, friendly and highly professional working environments
• Opportunities for professional development through a range of extensive learning
• Alignment with NHS pay rates and continuity in membership of the NHS pension scheme
• A sense of achievement in supporting a worthwhile cause
• A sense of wellbeing
• A good work-life balance
• Locations across well-populated areas of east Kent – all providing very good road and rail links
• NHS and financial discounts i.e. Blue Light Card
• Cycle to Work Schemes
• Free hospice parking

We invest in our employees, which is one of the key things that makes us an award-winning employer of choice.

If you think this is your ideal role and want to contribute to providing high quality palliative care and support to those at the end of their life, please apply now by submitting your application through the link below (NHSjobs).