Specialist Health Advisor

Specialist Health Advisor Role

The long-term plan gives commitment that all people admitted to hospital and those who are pregnant that smoke will be offered NHS Funded tobacco treatment services by 2023/2024.

The Specialist Health Advisor role will provide smoking cessation support to patients who are admitted as an inpatient to CHFT, following the maternity pathway or attendee in ED. This will include:

• Smoking cessation support and advice to access pharmacotherapy (e.g. Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) and including vapes).
• Providing ongoing support to people to quit, both in hospital as an inpatient and following discharge.

The smoking cessation service will increase the support we offer to people accessing our services, to help them to stop smoking or to reduce harm from tobacco and be smoke-free. The service will also help keep our hospital sites and grounds smoke-free and help protect all patients, staff and visitors.

The Trust aims to design and implement services, policies, and measures that meet the diverse needs of our service, population, and workforce, ensuring that none are placed at a disadvantage to others.

Key Responsibilities:

• Promote the health and wellbeing of people who use the service through offering specialist stop smoking advice, information, and support.
• Make contact with patients/women who smoke upon admission or at their pregnancy booking appointment and attend A&E. Actively try to recruit into the smoking cessation service.
• Encourage patients to change their behaviour (e.g. to try a quit attempt/abstain, to try stop smoking medication, to accept a referral for further support).
• Work with patients to change their behaviour to improve their health by stopping smoking.
• Use persuasive skills to encourage patients to change their behaviour (e.g. to try a quit attempt/abstain, to try stop smoking medication NRT, to accept a referral for further support).
• Ensure robust discharge planning to meet the needs of the patient’s ongoing stop smoking support, including:
  • Arranging onward referral/appointment (e.g. to a community stop smoking service, community pharmacy).
  • Signposting (GP, self-help resources).
  • Agreeing follow-up appointments/contacts.
  • Co-ordinating continued supply of medication or prescription.
  • Feeding back to health care partners (e.g. GP/primary care).
• Deliver stop smoking assessments, specialist advice and support, including advice on stop smoking pharmacotherapy and e-cigarettes, working within recommended protocols and guidelines. This will involve face-to-face and virtual working.

CHFT is an integrated Trust of 6,500+ colleagues providing hospital and community services to patients and communities across Calderdale and Kirklees. We are rated as ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission, are a top performing Trust for Elective Recovery, Emergency and Cancer Care, and widely acknowledged as a national digital lead when it comes to caring for people across our local and regional systems.

Our people are at the core of everything we do, hence our commitment to One Culture of Care. Our focus is to care for and support each other in order to provide outstanding compassionate care to our patients. That is why we are looking for an inclusive, collaborative, creative, innovative, and compassionate leader to join us in this role.