Nursing opportunities

As a specialist children’s hospital, our clinical nurse specialists are an important and integral part of the multidisciplinary team,delivering outstanding care within services for children and families under our care, across the South East of England and beyond.

Almost all of our specialist children’s services are supported by both deputy CNS and CNS roles who provide clinical expertise in a variety of ways that can include nurse-led clinics, education and training or telephone advice. An Evelina London clinical nurse specialist supports and enables children and families to live well with their conditions, take part in education throughout their childhood and receive all the care they need, as close to home as possible. The career journey of a clinical nurse specialist can vary and we would encourage you to talk to our education team about development opportunities if this is a pathway you are interested in.

Evelina London Children’s Hospital currently offers two distinct advanced clinical practitioner pathways with more on the way. These are within the paediatric nurse practitioner team and the paediatric intensive care unit / South Thames Retrieval Service team.

Both training programmes are supported with supernumerary training time, development opportunities and robust clinical supervision. The paediatric nurse practitioner team work with general paediatrics,speciality teams and the emergency department to respond to clinical emergencies within the Trust and plan and manage care for children throughout the hospital. The paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) advanced clinical practitioner team work in PICU or with the regional retrieval service to advise, manage, transport and place children requiring PICU throughout the south Thames region.

Our ambulatory care services comprise of Ocean, our main outpatients department, Snow Fox our planned care unit and several satellite clinics such ENT, neurosciences, allergy and pre-assessment based in St Thomas’ Hospital and in the community.

Ocean, located on the ground floor of Evelina London, has over twenty clinic rooms, dedicated height and weight rooms, a therapy gym and a plaster room running clinics six days a week. We welcome a host of paediatric specialties within the department including neurology, orthopaedics, sickle cell and neonatology, delivering face-to-face clinics to children, young people and their families. Many of our clinics are multi professional, and we have a strong relationship with our physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and clinical nurse specialists.

Snow Fox is a pathway-led ambulatory care unit, predominantly led by nurses, for children from birth to 16 years who need to have an investigation or procedure and may need to stay one or two nights. The children and young people visiting Snow Fox may be under the care of any of the specialties at Evelina London and therefore, our skilled nursing team has a very broad knowledge base, delivering nurse-led pathways of care. Procedures may include blood transfusions or drugs infusions and some procedures, such as cannulation and apheresis, are led by nurses or clinical nurse specialists. Many of our babies, children and young people have complex medical conditions and visit us regularly to receive planned care as part of their treatment to manage their condition.

Evelina London is one of 13 paediatric renal units in the UK that offer haemodialysis and transplantation, and has a living transplant programme.

Working in a specialist nephrology and renal unit will enable you to develop your skills in caring for complex, long-term patients. Our teams offer dialysis, post-transplant care and the management of acute renal failure.

We offer a wide range of opportunities for further expanding your role and experience, including in our haemodialysis unit, urology specialist nursing and our renal clinical nurse specialist team.

Our nurses on Beach ward make a real impact on individual children and their families. Our excellent ward management has built a ward where staff not only feel valued and supported but are also able to achieve excellence in their nursing practice across many specialties.

Mountain provides 30 beds for babies, children and young people,including a 7 bedded medical high dependency unit, supporting care for children and young people in our local community and across the south east.

Our medical nursing team cares for elective and emergency patients from a range of specialties, including complex respiratory, long-term ventilation, palliation and haemoglobinopathies. We are the main ward for local children admitted via our emergency department and work closely with the children’s community nurses and the Hospital@Home team.

The wide variety of conditions we treat develops skills and knowledge in both common childhood conditions, like bronchiolitis, asthma and diabetes, as well as specialist conditions, such as paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PIMS-TS). The Evelina London team were amongst the first in the world to report PIMS-TS as a new condition. It is thought to be caused by an earlier COVID-19 infection, which has provoked the immune system, triggering an inflammation. Our nursing team are supported by clinical educators and clinical nurse specialists connected to the ward, who will help you develop your skills and knowledge in all of these areas.

Mountain high dependency unit provides care for patients requiring a higher level of supervision or intervention. The unit is supported by a highly-skilled, multi-disciplinary team who work together, to ensure optimum care for the child and family. The length of stay varies, but children with complex respiratory or airway needs often have a long stay on the ward, so it is important for our nurses to build a strong bond with the children in their care.

The unit has seven designated medical, high dependency beds for babies, children and young people.

Our team of nurses have exceptional skills in managing high dependency patients with complex conditions and have regular learning opportunities to share and develop their skills. Our excellent clinical educator and senior nurses offer ongoing support and education.

Our neonatal unit is a tertiary level three referral unit. We are one of three hub neonatal intensive care units (NICU) for the South London Network.

Our unit comprises 20 intensive care cots, 12 high dependency cots and 20 special care cots. We treat around 1,000 patients per year, caring for babies with surgical, cardiac, neurological, renal and metabolic disorders as well as those born prematurely.

We are aware many neonatal nurses will not have had the opportunity to care for babies requiring the specialist surgical and cardiac interventions offered at Evelina London. To support this learning and development, all our nurses are offered a place on our in-house surgical and cardiac study days run several times a year. Our nursing team are fully supported by the neonatal clinical educator based within the unit.

Career progression is actively encouraged. To this end, we support band 5 nurses to complete neonatal modules and hone their clinical skills in preparation for the band 6 role. A band 6 development programme is in place for experienced band 6s, preparing them to take on the challenge of being in charge of the unit and ultimately working towards a band 7 post.

We are proud of our leadership in research, cultivating opportunities for innovation, while also making sure our care has an evidence based foundation. We are exceptionally proud of our Baby Friendly Initiative Award (Level 3) which is testament to the skill, dedication and commitment of all our nurses, in supporting mothers to breastfeed.

Whilst working on our unit is undeniably demanding, it is also extremely rewarding. We pride ourselves in being a very friendly unit where everyone feels supported and valued and everyone gives their best every day.

As a member of the children’s cardiac, respiratory and intensive care nursing team you will be joining a team of extraordinary nurses.

You will be given an opportunity to learn from some of the most influential medical professionals in their fields, as well as the wider multidisciplinary teams. You will be guided to continually improve the services within the directorate by developing your skills and knowledge, with the opportunity to showcase new innovations through publications and by presenting at National and International conferences. Our cardiac, respiratory and intensive care services are offered at Evelina London Children’s Hospital and The Royal Brompton Hospital sites.

The South Thames Retrieval Service is an integral part of our Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Evelina London Children’s Hospital.

Our retrieval teams stabilise and transfer around 1,000 children per year (by air and road), from the South Thames region and beyond, to the different London intensive care units.

Retrieval teams consist of a retrieval nurse – a very experienced PICU nurse with an extended role – a retrieval lead and either a medical lead, or more likely, one of our advanced nurse practitioners. The advanced nurse practitioner course is run in-house here at Evelina London and is one of the key career pathways our nurses can access.

Our education team are ready to support your professional development so you can make the most of the fantastic variety of opportunities on offer.

Evelina London's Forest paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) provides 20 critical care beds to babies, children and young people. The Royal Brompton PICU provides 16 critical care beds specialising in the care of children requiring cardiac and respiratory intensive care.

Our combined cross-site critical care capacity makes us one of the largest PICU services in the UK, accommodating all specialities within Evelina London, regional admissions, and running our South Thames Retrieval Service.

At Evelina London, we provide all nurses the opportunity to develop within a leading tertiary centre, caring for children with a wide range of conditions – from acute admissions, to post-op surgical care covering all specialities within Evelina London, including cardiac intensive care nursing integrated with paediatric intensive care.

PICU on our Royal Brompton site specialises in the care of babies and children requiring cardiac and respiratory care and surgery.

Our well-established, dynamic multi-professional teams, are committed to teaching at every level and enabling our teams to excel in their field. We extend this across those who are brand new to PICU, to training our specialist extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) teams, retrieval nurses, and advanced nurse practitioners.

Within our PICUs we consider our teams to be our biggest asset. We are committed to working together, promoting work-life balance, and positively supporting each other so that we deliver the best care to our children and families.

Evelina London's Sky paediatric critical care unit (PCCU) provides 10 critical care beds to babies, children and young people requiring level 2 care.

Sky critical care provides level 2 critical care to all specialities within Evelina London. Sky is a new unit which opened in 2022, sitting within the overall critical care group alongside PICU.

The Paediatric High dependency unit (PHDU) at the Royal Brompton site is a 10 bedded unit based across the PICU and ward areas, which cares for babies and children requiring level 2 care.

PHDU is an established unit providing exceptional care to children with cardiac and respiratory conditions.

Both Critical Care units have dynamic and innovative teams who are developing and growing our services.

We are investing in critical care nurses to improve care for children of all specialties within Evelina London to the highest level of expertise. This is grounded in a joint management and education approach, which each member of our team experiences from day one.

Level 2 care is complex and fast paced, with a high turnover of patients.

Both Sky PCCU and Royal Brompton PHDU provide an excellent, multidisciplinary environment to grow and develop in paediatric critical care nursing.

Our children’s heart services support children needing level 1 tertiary referral care which involves cardiac surgery, cardiac intervention, advanced cardiac imaging as well as specialist cardiology care. Therefore, working in our services offers a wide range of experiences and development opportunities.

Our in-patient facilities across both sites include areas for children requiring ward care as well as high dependency care, all within the same environment. Furthermore, our nurses are given the opportunity to learn advanced nursing skills through courses developed by our education team.

As well as our in-patient specialist services, we provide cardiac outpatient and pre-assessment nurse-led services and have a large team of highly-skilled clinical nurse specialists. Our clinical nurse specialists provide support to our patients, families, carers and community teams, applying their expert knowledge. We empower, support and advocate for our patients and work collaboratively with our colleagues in the community. This includes our award-winning home monitoring service.

We diagnose and treat all kinds of children’s heart problems, including congenital heart disease, acquired heart disease and rhythm disturbances. This includes the vertical model of care for children and their families with inherited cardiac conditions (ICC) ensuring lifelong family supported care.

We care for over 20,000 patients each year from all over the United Kingdom and beyond, through children’s heart services on the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital sites, as well as many more through our Lifelong Network which currently spans 48 hospitals across London, the South East and East of England. We are extremely proud that we are able to care for patients from before they are born (fetal cardiology) through their childhood and into young adulthood.

Snow Leopard on the Evelina London Children’s Hospital site is a 13 bedded home from home environment, supporting care for children and young people who have long-term ventilation needs (LTV), and those requiring neurorehabilitation and sleep investigations.

Children who come to Snow Leopard often have complex medical problems and are likely to have had long stays in hospital during their lives. The unit helps to ease the move from hospital to home for these children and their families by reducing the amount of medical interventions needed and allowing the families to get ready for discharge. To reinforce this step-down approach, much of the care is given by senior nursing assistants, who are trained in caring for ventilated children. Our neurorehabilitation programmes are goal focused and led by our specialist multidisciplinary therapy team, supporting the recovery of children and young people following brain injury.

On the Royal Brompton site, the respiratory service is world renowned for advances in the treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF), and tertiary care for primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) including diagnostics, interstitial lung disease (ILD) and bronchiectasis.

It also offers large non-invasive and invasive ventilation services and we have a severe asthma and nurse-led biologic service. This cohort of patients are cared for on Rose Ward, a 25 bedded inpatient ward which incorporates a four bedded sleep unit.

We have a large team of highly-skilled clinical nurse specialists who work across both

Our friendly children’s emergency department is located on the emergency floor of the St Thomas’ Hospital site. We currently see over 29,000 children a year with various conditions that range from acute medical and surgical emergencies to traumatic injuries.

The multidisciplinary team are part of the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and work in close collaboration with the specialty teams. We also work very closely with the adult emergency department and the urgent care centre to provide high standards of patient care. The department is supported by skilled emergency nurse practitioners, a fulltime play specialist, youth worker and a liaison health visitor.

We offer all staff a training and development programme to enable nurses to enhance their emergency nursing skills and further their career in emergency care.

Our purpose-built children’s short stay unit is located next to our emergency department. This 24 hour, six bedded unit delivers care to children and young people requiring a short period of admission.

The unit is led by the emergency department team and nursing staff rotate between both areas. This joint working enables the emergency nursing staff to develop additional skills and experiences, whilst also providing continuity of care for the children and their families.

Savannah Dragonfly is a national centre for complex motor disorders, managing dystonia using techniques such deep brain stimulation and intrathecal baclofen devices. We manage a wide variety of neurological conditions such as stroke, encephalitis and complex epilepsy and collaborate closely with palliative care teams and local hospices.

Our neurology and inherited metabolic disease (IMD) service is one of the main centres in the UK offering treatment to patients with all types of IMD, providing a tertiary service to both regional patients in the south of England and from overseas. We see more than 300 new patients each year with over 200 admissions to our 16 bedded unit for acute diagnosis and emergency management. We manage many complex conditions including organic acidemias and urea cycle disorders, and are a national centre for glycogen storage disorders.

Our specialist clinical educator supports and encourages learning at all levels, offering frequent training opportunities as well as one-to-one teaching. We also benefit from a large clinical nurse specialist team, who actively support the ward in training and development.

Savannah surgical ward offers both tertiary specialist surgical services to children in the south and south east of England, and emergency surgery to the children in our local community. Our orthopaedic and spinal service is the largest dedicated children’s orthopaedic unit in the region, treating bone and joint problems in children, performing complex spinal surgery and assisting with the management of children with orthopaedic emergencies, including fractures and infections.

Our specialist surgical services include cleft lip and palate repairs, ENT, plastics, and abdominal surgery.

Our orthopaedics and spinal surgery teams specialise in the management of the orthopaedic aspects of neuromuscular disease, especially cerebral palsy. Many of our patients have multiple and complex needs and we work closely with other teams including the skeletal dysplasia service and intensive care. Our ward team is supported by clinical educators, clinical nurse specialists and a large multidisciplinary team who work together with us, to ensure we provide the best care for our patients.

The new Children’s Day Treatment Centre comprises a well designed day surgery unit with two new operating theatres dedicated to day surgery. This purpose-built facility has been designed with families in mind.

With everything needed for day surgery in one, family-friendly space, families wait less time on the day of surgery, as pre-surgery checks, operation, recovery and preparation for going home can all be done in one place, in one day.

Our new centre provides facilities for our team to treat up to an additional 2,300 children and young people every year. Working as part of an integrated team, nurses will be able to gain experience in all elements of the same-day surgical journey. 

Our children’s short stay surgical unit will give you the opportunity to develop your expertise in a wide variety of specialties including; cleft lip and palate, plastics, ENT, MRI, gastroenterology, ophthalmology and general surgery. As an extremely busy and fast paced unit, it is essential that you are able to quickly build relationships with the children and their family.

The theatre department consists of two paediatric theatre suites. Forest and Reef, and links with other satellite areas within St Thomas’ Hospital.

Forest theatres comprises of three theatres, a procedure room, a cardiac catheter room and an eight-bay recovery unit. Reef theatre is situated on the lower ground floor and comprises of two theatres and a four-bay recovery unit.

As part of a hospital providing a wide range of complex care, we offer a range of surgical specialties such as: cardiac, orthopaedics (including scoliosis surgery), ENT (including complex airway), renal (including transplants), gastroenterology, general, plastics, cleft lip and palate and emergency surgery.

Our theatre and recovery department provide a wealth of opportunities for nurses. With such a varied mix of specialties you will be given ample opportunity to develop your skills and knowledge in areas of your particular interest.

Our community nurses provide care to children and young people in the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. The team is divided into three areas of care; acute, long-term and complex care. Our extended team includes critical care nurses, palliative care nurses and paediatric nurse specialists.

Nurses that are new to working in the community will be well supported by a professional development nurse and highly experienced colleagues. There are excellent opportunities for training and development including study days, conferences and individual learning.

Hospital@home team

Our Hospital@home team are experienced nurses who provide nursing assessment, support and advice to children and families during acute periods of illness. They provide short-term nursing care to enable early discharge from hospital and liaise with the emergency department, reviewing patients at home to avoid admission. We facilitate two teams; one at Evelina London Children’s Hospital and one at King’s College Hospital. These teams provide rapid response and are able to carry out visits within three hours of referral, offering up to three visits a day should this be required, operating 7 days a week. As the service develops, we will also be able to support GPs with acutely unwell children by offering home support, monitoring and observation.

Community nurses

Our community nurses act as a bridge between hospital and home. We aim to improve the quality of life of children and their carers by helping them to become more competent in managing their condition and reducing the number of acute episodes leading to hospital admission. We are often the first point of contact for families and coordinate appropriate healthcare and support. The team offers generic support following planned or unplanned hospital admission, for dressing and wound care, intravenous antibiotics and oxygen saturation monitoring. We work closely with the Hospital@home teams, have close working relationships with the multi-disciplinary teams in the area and the GP local care networks and provide a 7 day service to children and families in Lambeth and Southwark.

Community nurses – complex care

Our multi-skilled team of continuing care nurses, outreach nurses and complex care school nurses, provide care and support to children and young people with complex care needs, living in our local community. The team support families caring for children and young people who have a complex medical need as a result of disability, accident or illness, enabling them to be at home and attend school whenever possible. Working in partnership with families, we support children with long-term ventilation, tracheostomy care, assessments, enteral feeding support and provide education and advice to schools and social care.

Health visitors are nurses or midwives who have undertaken additional training in community public health nursing to become specialist community public health nurses. Health visitors lead the Healthy Child Programme (0-5) and are fundamental in ensuring every child has the best start in life.

Your role will routinely include working with families with a new baby, from late in the antenatal period up to five years of age. You will use your expertise and training to identify needs, determine risks and work with clinical and public health colleagues to ensure the right support is provided as early as possible. You may work with at-risk or deprived groups, such as the homeless and refugees.

You will usually provide individual support and advice to families in their homes but you will also facilitate clinics and groups with different professionals including early years practitioners, children’s social care professionals, GPs, school nurses, allied health professionals, and voluntary services, to support the needs of children and families.

There are opportunities for health visitors to progress to other specialist roles to provide intensive support to families with additional support needs and help parents to be the best they can be in order to meet the physical, social and emotional needs of their child.

Our team also consist of community staff nurses (registered in any field) supporting the health visitors to deliver the healthy child programme and there are development opportunities in-house to support those who wish to progress to undertake the specialist community public health nurses-health visiting (SCPHN- HV) programme.

Your day-to-day role may vary from area to area, but will typically include:

• supporting parents during their transition to parenthood and in the weeks following the birth of their baby
• providing support and advice for the initiation and duration of breastfeeding, infant feeding and healthy eating for young children
• assessing children’s growth and development needs
• delivering health reviews to assess children’s growth and development needs, including the two-year health review and to be ready for school
• promoting the best start in speech, language and communication including identification of additional support to be ready to learn
• supporting maternal and infant mental health
• supporting healthy weight and healthy nutrition conversations to prevent childhood obesity through behaviour change techniques
• advising on minor illness, home safety, safer sleep and accident prevention 

You will also complete holistic assessments in partnership with the family, which builds on their strengths and identifies any difficulties they have with meeting their child’s needs. You’ll often be the first to recognise whether a child is at risk of harm and a very important part of your role will be working with other health and social care partners to:

• safeguard and protect vulnerable children
• identify those at risk
• support local safeguarding arrangements and ensure the voice of the child is considered health visiting

School nurses are nurses or midwives who have undertaken additional training and qualifications to become specialist community public health nurses (SCPHN-SN). School nurses lead the Healthy Child Programme: 5-19 and are fundamental in ensuring every child has the best start in life.

Band 5 community staff nurses within the school nursing service support school nurses in delivery of the Healthy Child Programme. There are development opportunities for those who wish to progress to undertake the SCPHN-SN programme and those who wish to develop further as a community staff nurse in school nursing.

You will work year-round to support children and young people both in schools and other settings, such as their home or local health centre, often using digital technology to support their needs. You will lead a team including community staff nurses and school nursing assistants, to ensure services are delivered efficiently and safely.

School nurses use their clinical judgement and public health expertise to identify health needs early, determining risk and protective factors and providing early intervention to prevent issues from escalating. You’ll work in partnership with schools, children’s social care professionals, GPs, health visitors, allied health professionals and voluntary services, to meet the needs of children and young people.

The school nurse’s day-to-day role varies from area to area, but will typically  include:

• working with other professionals to keep children safe, to support local safeguarding arrangements and ensure that the voice of the child is considered
• supporting holistic assessment of children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing needs and providing mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention approaches
• carrying out health assessments to identify risk-taking behaviours and supporting children to keep themselves safe
• offering individual support to children, young people and families to manage lifestyle concerns and change behaviours, for example related to healthy weight
• early identification of vulnerability which may impact on the child or young person’s education or school attendance. This may include being a young carer, being a child in care, experiencing domestic or emotional abuse or parental substance misuse
• supporting children and young people who have complex and long-term health needs
• helping children and young people to develop a knowledge of self-care, autonomy and decision making, including how to access health services