Overview
Are you a compassionate and experienced Nurse ready to take the next step in your career? Join Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust as a Band 6 Charge Nurse in Tonbridge Cottage Hospital. You’ll play a vital role in delivering high-quality, holistic care to patients, while leading and supporting a dedicated team of healthcare professionals. Working under the direction of the Matron, you’ll take charge of the ward and hospital in their absence, represent the team at Trust forums, and contribute to service development.
This is a fantastic opportunity to work in a supportive, multidisciplinary environment that values kindness, professionalism, and excellence. If you’re passionate about making a difference and ready to lead with care, we’d love to hear from you.
Responsibilities
* As Charge Nurse, you’ll be responsible for the clinical and managerial leadership of a team of Nurses and Healthcare Assistants, ensuring the delivery of safe, effective, and compassionate care.
* You’ll manage patient assessments, develop rehabilitation programmes, and monitor outcomes.
* You’ll support staff development through supervision, appraisals, and in-house teaching.
* You’ll work closely with the Matron to maintain high standards of care, manage resources efficiently, and ensure compliance with governance and safety protocols.
* Your role will involve attending multidisciplinary meetings, liaising with internal and external partners, and responding to patient and family concerns.
* You’ll also contribute to service improvement initiatives and uphold the Trust’s CARE values—Compassionate, Aspirational, Responsive, and Excellent—in everything you do.
About the Trust and culture
Rated ‘outstanding’ by the CQC, we’ve got a passion for delivering high standards of patient care and excellent services to improve the health of our communities. To do this we need outstanding people who share our values compassionate Aspirational Responsive Excellent.
We know a commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion leads to better patient care and a happier workforce. We pride ourselves in being diverse and welcome applications from people with varied backgrounds, perspectives and experiences.
We ask for information about your protected characteristics on our application forms. This isn’t visible to anyone involved with shortlisting or interviewing you, except when you choose to be considered under the guaranteed interview scheme due to disability. Short listers will see two ticks alongside your application to ensure they apply the principles of the scheme to your submission. The data we collect helps us to ensure we are attracting diversity in our applicants, that all our colleagues have equitable access to career opportunities and supports us on our journey to being a Great Place to Work.
Working arrangements
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want you to be able to work in a way that is best for us, for our patients and for you. Talk to us about a flexible working arrangement that won’t involve sacrificing time for personal interests or family commitments. We’ll support you to work flexibly in a way that will suit us both.
Additional information
See where you can go with KCHFT career pathways. As a Community Trust, many of our roles require driving to perform duties. You will be asked to confirm you have a full UK driving licence where driving is a requirement of the role to be able to proceed with your application. We are committed to supporting candidates with disabilities into employment; if you are unable to drive due to a disability, please contact the Recruitment Team via kentchft.recruitment@nhs.net quoting the vacancy reference number so we can support you further.
The job description and person specification gives you all the information you need about this role. Please look carefully at the criteria in the person specification and tell us what you have done that shows you meet this in your application. If you need an application form in an alternative format please let our recruitment team know. All information you supply on your application should, to the best of your knowledge, be true and accurate.
Questions and closing
Still have questions? The recruiting manager would love to hear from you; their contact details can be found in the job advert. We can get a lot of applications for some roles, so to be in with the best chance of being shortlisted please apply as soon as possible. A vacancy may close early if there is a lot of interest in the job.
At KCHFT we strongly encourage colleagues in clinical and non-clinical roles who have direct or social contact with patients to be fully vaccinated. We will be doing all we can to ensure your safety and that of your colleagues and the patients we serve.
Find out more about the community difference here. Good luck! We can’t wait to meet you and welcome you to #teamKCHFT, #cometocommunity.
This advert closes on Thursday 13 Nov 2025
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