Our values

Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust nurses are leaders in cardio-respiratory care. We are an integral part of a world-class centre of excellence for the treatment of heart and lung disease. At the heart of our practice is a determination to provide the best possible care for our patients. We do this through helping our staff realise their potential.

Our Trust strives to provide an environment of excellence for patients and staff.  We offer the chance to work with many of the world’s leading cardio-respiratory experts providing cutting-edge and complex care and treatment. To achieve this we place great emphasis on continuing education and professional development.

 As a specialist trust we offer significant career development opportunities. We have more than 800 nurses working at our main sites in Chelsea, central London and at Harefield in Middlesex.

Our nurses can focus on adult or paediatric care and there are an above average number of nurse specialist roles for those committed to developing their knowledge and experience of acute and chronic heart and lung diseases, critical care and transplantation.

Advancing practice

Continuing professional development is vital for our nurses. We have a dedicated team of clinical educators who provide a wide range of educational opportunities. We have published cardiorespiratory competencies that support the Knowledge and Skills framework and provide a framework for a staged development and career pathway. This is enhanced with support for advanced learning through other educational institutions.

Our partnership with the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, enables nurses to undertake the MSc in Critical Care or Cardiorespiratory Nursing. Supervision and mentorship is also provided for those with expanding roles, such as nurse prescribers.

We also actively encourage nurses to shape the future of care. Our nurse forum aims to improve health outcomes and the delivery of quality services through high quality research and development.

Involving patients and improving care 

Our patients are an essential part of service improvement. We are committed to understanding the experiences of all those who use our services through using a variety of   different methods to obtain patient/user feedback including:

• comment cards

• story-telling

• focus/review groups

• exit cards

We have active patient support groups and we are keen to involve people of all ages and backgrounds.  Read more on patient involvement. 

We also undertake the Essence of Care Benchmarks which form part of the Department of Health 2000 NHS plan. This enables us to audit a variety of areas of practice, all of which have an impact on patient care, for example privacy and dignity, personal and oral hygiene and food and nutrition.   

We believe that undertaking these benchmarks and taking patient-focused action ensures that best practice is maintained throughout the trust, allowing our patients to receive high quality care at all times. 

Leadership

Developing the leadership potential of our nursing staff is given high priority. We were one of the first trusts to run the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Clinical Leadership programme in 1998, and each year since we have facilitated the course for  ward managers and specialist nurses .We have also commenced our own in-house cardio-respiratory leadership rotation programme to develop advanced practice and management skills.

Our nurses also play a key role in publicising the knowledge and innovations developed here. We maintain an active profile through conference presentations, writing articles for nursing and medical journals, editing and reviewing articles and textbooks.