Meet our Team

Nursing Staff

The Emergency Department is a clinical environment suited to those who prefer a fast turnover of patients, a relatively fast pace and, it seems, a never ending workload. Many of us have of course worked in other areas gaining various levels of knowledge and expertise and have transferred to the ED where the term “Jack of All Trades “ is a  common place reference to our skill set! We, the nursing team of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary are a relatively large staff group with the normal breakdown of nursing grades one would expect in a large teaching hospital. From the Band 2 to Band 7 staff, we collectively strive on a daily basis to ensure that our patients are given the best care we can administer. It is essential that everyone appreciates their value in such a large team and in order to help us achieve this, our nursing staff are divided into 4 teams. All teams have a mixture of nursing grades and are lead by a Band 7 Team Manager and Band 6 Team Leader. A team composition changes annually to allow flexibility in skill mix, numbers and encourage social interaction. Team Leaders take ownership of staff development and will meet with each nurse every 3 months to assess their progress and development needs. They are pivotal in ensuring that our staff gain the necessary experience and skills to help us meet targets, initiatives, national and local incentives and to provide each individual with feedback that will facilitate personal improvement and growth. There are six Band 7 staff who, in addition to the Team Manager role, perform a range of administrative, clinical and managerial duties whilst also providing support with general education and training programmes. In short, they perform a wide range of tasks from ensuring that staff get paid to presenting at local and national conferences and meetings.

Our Band 5 nursing staff are the very infrastructure of our business. They perform in different roles every day and rotate between each of the clinical areas. As they gather more skills and knowledge, their responsibility increases, from a new recruit, who learns to perform all the basic functions of an Emergency Nurse, to a competent and multi tasking clinical co-ordinator ready to apply their skills in the department or in the pre-hospital setting. Working a 12.5hour day, the Band 5 Staff Nurses rarely experience the luxury of a “quiet day.” We depend on them greatly and when the demands of the service are operating at full tilt, they never let us down.

As a CSW in the ED, the demands of the job are very different to that of the wards. It is a physically demanding role with the constant trekking of corridors to retrieve equipment, stock or escorting patients to the wards and other clinical areas. The CSW team are essential to providing some of the core elements of care to our patients. They participate on Care Rounds and without hesitation or objection, pick up some of the less glamorous tasks on offer.  We have a few staff who are extending their practise to incorporate more advanced skills and their contribution to services such a Front Load Assessment is invaluable.

For the most part, we are a happy, well integrated nursing team. We work hard and play hard ensuring that each day, we try to do things better than the day before….. …….learn by our mistakes………and create a culture that is open, honest and friendly.