Job Summary
NHS Blood and Transplant are keen to welcome an experienced nurse looking for a new home with the long-term, supportive, and welcoming Cumbria team.
As a Session Sister/Charge Nurse, you will provide confident, visible clinical leadership to a team of Donor Carers and Donor Care Supervisors, ensuring they remain motivated, skilled, and capable of delivering highquality, compassionate care.
You will create a positive and supportive working environment, offering ongoing training, supervision, and guidance while addressing performance issues or team concerns as they arise.
Using your clinical expertise and indepth knowledge of donor eligibility, you will assess the suitability of potential donors, considering their medical history, current health status, and any relevant risk factors to ensure donor and product safety.
You will oversee the safe and efficient running of blood donation sessions, balancing operational performance with regulatory compliance, and rolemodelling behaviours that reflect NHSBT values.
As a key decisionmaker, you will manage and escalate adverse events, maintain clinical standards, and support continuous improvement, ensuring exceptional donor experience and contributing to the overall quality and safety of the service.
Main duties of the job
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Taking clinical responsibility for ensuring the safe assessment and blood donation of our donors.
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Being accountable for the safe running of a blood donation session.
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Taking responsibility for ensuring an excellent donor experience.
- Maintaining the competency and skills of your team and yourself.
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Being able to adapt communication styles for difficult conversations.
- Maintaining your professional development to help us deliver improvements to our practice.
Your working hours will be on a shift basis but, the normal hours for this role are 7 days per fortnight (4 one week and 3 the next). Shift times will vary but they’ll be approximately 7.5 hour days
Shifts are typically between Monday and Friday with one Sunday per month and they’ll be between the hours of approximately 07:30 and 21:30.
About You
Experience and Knowledge
- Demonstrate leadership qualities and understand the principles of best practice to deliver high quality care.
- Have experience of supporting the professional development of others.
- Have an understanding of clinical audit and research.
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Have experience of supporting improvements and change in practice.
- Have an awareness of patient safety initiatives and risk management.
- Have experience of working with Information Technology such as hand-held devices and Microsoft Office packages (Word, Excel and PowerPoint).
Qualifications and Training
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Registered Nurse with current Nursing and Midwifery Council registration (which must be maintained) as Registered Nurse Adult
- Hold a full and valid UK driving licence with no more than 6 points.
About Us
It takes all types of people to deliver the kind of service that saves and improves lives. At NHS Blood and Transplant, you’ll join a team of more than 6,000 people who are making a genuine difference to communities, families, friends, relatives and more across the UK. We play a unique and special role in the NHS by helping people do something extraordinary- donate blood, blood products, organs, tissues, or stem cells to save someone in need.
Our three core values are what set us apart. They guide and inspire everything we do.
By being caring, expertly meeting the needs of our patients and our people, and accepting nothing less than the best quality, we can do extraordinary work and help our people to do something extraordinary in their career, too. Three small words, one big difference - Caring, Expert and Quality. Together we'll save and improve more lives than ever.
You will join us on our journey to create an inclusive workplace and aim to reflect the diverse communities we work with, and we positively encourage applications from all sectors of the community.
What we offer:
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No night shifts.
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TOIL (Time off in Lieu)
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Opportunities to work in other areas/specialisms.
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Facilitating donation
- Flexible working options we promote flexible working where the role allows. We’re happy to discuss what flexibility might look like for you.
- Generous annual leave - 27 days annual leave (pro rata for part-time) plus Bank Holidays, increasing to 29 days after 5 years’ service and to 33 days after 10 years.
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Inclusive pension scheme - the NHS Pension Scheme is a defined benefit scheme (not dependent on investment returns). Further details and outline of benefits can be found at: www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/information-about-nhs-pensions
- Supportive learning culture - we’ve fostered a culture of continuous learning where colleagues are well-led, engaged, and encouraged to grow. We support you in reaching your full potential, both in your current role and future career. Our Thrive program embodies our commitment to learning and development, offering a wide range of activities to support your personal and professional growth. It’s open to everyone at NHSBT, ensuring you have the resources to succeed and shine in your role.
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Health and wellbeing support we offer confidential services including occupational health, employee assistance programme, and wellbeing resources. Our support is available to all colleagues and we endeavour to provide tailored workplace adjustments where possible.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we welcome applications from disabled candidates. We will talk with you to explore any adjustments that may help you during the recruitment process.
You can find more information about accessibility, our culture, and how we support applicants on the NHSBT Careers website:
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Read about our application process
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Learn more about our culture at NHSBT
To learn more, please see the job description and person specification. These can be accessed via the link below, or by clicking ‘Apply’ if you are viewing this advert on another site.
Next steps
This vacancy will close at 23:59 on Sunday 28 June 2026.
The assessment process for this role will include: a single interview. Interviews are anticipated to be held on Friday 10 July 2026. subject to confirmation.
For informal enquiries please contact Louise Rogerson, Senior Sister of the Cumbria Team at [email protected].
