Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the Head & Neck Cancer Team as a Band 6 Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) Nurse on a fixed-term maternity cover basis.

This specialist role is central to supporting patients referred with suspected Head & Neck cancer, ensuring timely assessment, investigation and progression through their diagnostic pathway. Working closely with Consultants, Clinical Nurse Specialists and the wider multidisciplinary team, you will provide clinical triage of urgent suspected cancer referrals, coordinate diagnostic pathways and support delivery of national cancer waiting time standards.

You will play a key role in improving patient experience by acting as a clinical point of contact, undertaking telephone assessments, identifying patients suitable for direct-to-test investigations and helping to ensure patients receive a diagnosis, or cancer is excluded, as quickly as possible.

We are looking for an experienced and motivated registered nurse with excellent assessment, communication and organisational skills. You should be confident working autonomously, prioritising workload and making clinical decisions within a fast-paced environment. Experience within cancer services, surgery, diagnostics or pathway management would be advantageous.

If you are passionate about improving cancer pathways and making a real difference to patients at an important stage of their journey, we would love to hear from you.

Main duties of the job

The Head & Neck Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) Clinical Nurse Specialist is a specialist cancer nursing role that forms a critical component of the Head & Neck Cancer Service diagnostic pathway. 

The post holder will be responsible for the autonomous clinical triage and assessment of patients referred via the Urgent Suspected Cancer (USC) Head & Neck pathway, ensuring patients are progressed promptly through diagnostic 
investigations in accordance with national cancer standards. 

The service manages approximately 350-400 urgent suspected cancer referrals each month. The post holder will undertake specialist review of referrals, conduct clinical telephone assessments, identify patients suitable for direct-to-test investigations, coordinate diagnostic pathways and escalate clinical concerns appropriately to consultants and members of the multidisciplinary team. 

The role is a key component of the transformed Head & Neck diagnostic model and directly supports delivery of the national 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) and wider Cancer Waiting Time standards. Through proactive clinical triage, pathway management and utilisation of direct-to-test pathways, the post holder will contribute to earlier diagnosis, improved patient experience and reduced delays across the 
cancer pathway. 

Working for our organisation

We’re an organisation that is getting better and better and our improvements are driven by a determination to deliver care we’re proud of and our patients are happy with. 

They are benefitting from a new electronic patient record (we were the last acute trust in London to introduce one) and our maternity services have been rated good by the Care Quality Commission. 

We operate from two main sites – KGH in Goodmayes and Queen’s Hospital in Romford. We have two busy emergency departments with more than 346,000 people visiting them last year. We’re campaigning to secure the £35m we need to transform the A&E at Queen’s and get rid of corridor care. 

We’re proud of our regional Neurosciences Centre, Radiotherapy Centre and Hyper Acute Stroke Unit. We’re also part of the North East London Cancer Alliance. 

We run a Women’s Health Hub in Ilford; an Ageing Well Centre in Hornchurch; and Community Diagnostic Centres (CDC) at Barking Community Hospital and at St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub. These CDCs are open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.  

The majority of our 8,400 staff – who come from 146 different countries - live in the three diverse London boroughs we serve and are from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. Many can work flexibly and more than 400 of them are on our Ofsted accredited apprenticeship programmes. We’re proud to be a London Living Wage employer.