Chaplain | North Bristol NHS Trust

Posting date:	05 August 2025
Salary:	Not specified
Additional salary information:	£38,682 - £46,580 pro rata
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	12 September 2025
Location:	Bristol, BS105NB
Company:	North Bristol NHS
Job type:	Contract
Job reference:	7364110/339-CNO4110-CCC

Summary

This role involves providing spiritual care across the Trust in clinical and non-clinical area to patients, carers, staff and volunteers. It includes responding to referrals, but also a proactive presence, particularly in palliative areas and maternity loss. It is part of a 7-day a week Chaplaincy presence, with a shared rota for evening and weekend on-call from home, providing an urgent response service across Bristol NHS Group. Working as a team is key within the Spiritual, Pastoral and Religious Care Service and alongside colleagues throughout the organisation, seeking to uphold the Trust values.

This is an opportunity for a chaplain or spiritual care practitioner who wants to take the next step in delivering spiritual, pastoral, and religious care in a hospital environment.

North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) has recently created a new Hospital Group with University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW). As we develop a single managed chaplaincy service across both Trusts, the opportunity has arisen for this fixed term post for a Chaplain until the end of March 2026.

Under the direction of the Lead Chaplain, you will be a spiritual, pastoral, and religious care practitioner (chaplain), responsible for enabling, facilitating, promoting, providing, and contributing to the spiritual, pastoral, and religious care of people within the hospital community.

You will be based at Southmead Hospital and will participate in a Bristol wide out of hours on-call service delivering emergency spiritual, pastoral, and religious care to people across Bristol NHS Group.

We are looking to appoint a suitably qualified and skilled person who is ambitious to provide the best spiritual care possible. You will join a multi-faith SPaRC service where teamwork, personal development, professional practice, and a commitment to our Trust values are taken seriously and where you will contribute to the development and delivery of spiritual care in line with our SPaRC Strategic Plan.

North Bristol NHS Trust employs over 12,000 staff providing healthcare to the residents of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset from our award-winning hospital building at Southmead. We are the regional Major Trauma Centre, and an internationally recognised centre of excellence in a range of services and major specialities. Our vision is that by enabling our teams to be the best that they can be, we will provide exceptional healthcare, personally delivered.

North Bristol NHS Trust values all people as individuals. We aim to be an anti-discriminatory organisation and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We welcome applicants from all underrepresented groups.
• An autonomous, qualified practitioner (chaplain) whose role is to seek out and respond to the SPaRC needs of individuals, carers, family, visitors, volunteers, and staff while remaining accountable to the lead chaplain for all aspects of their duties and decisions.
• Seek to establish relationships of trust and support with all those in the post-holder’s care, identifying SPaRC needs and responding to them.
• Engage in the assessment, delivery, enablement, monitoring and recording of person-centred
SPaRC which holistically addresses the individual and collective needs of the hospital
community.
• Providing or facilitating safe, effective, compassionate, responsive, and continuing care and interventions that addresses the identified holistic SPaRC needs of people including those with
highly complex situations to support healing and wholeness, within the parameters of the role and in accordance with professional codes of conduct and clinical governance.
• Respond to people in spiritual distress including those who may show challenging behaviours or have highly complex needs by assessing, analysing, advising, providing, receiving, and responding to them using professional and pastoral knowledge, skills, and practice.
• Take active steps to work with, involve and support people in addressing their own healthcare needs, maximising their potential healing and wholeness within the limits of their illness.
• Provide, enable, or facilitate within the limitations of the post-holder's religion/belief and faith authority, religious rites, services, and ceremonies as may be requested or required. This may
include prayer, baptism, blessing, naming, recitations, and other rites at times when patients, including children and babies, may be facing complex surgery, approaching the end of life, after death, or following baby loss during pregnancy or soon after.
• Participate in a 24-hour, 7 day per week SPaRC emergency on call service shared with UHBW aiming to respond within 1 hour and provide SPaRC support as required during any Major Incidents subject to separate or prior agreement.
• Arrange, conduct, or advise on emergency marriages in hospital according to national, legal, endorsing faith body, and Trust guidelines.
• Facilitate any religious need that is outside the scope of the post-holder's belief or authority.
• Arrange and conduct Trust funerals, especially for babies, as required, liaising with families, bereavement midwives, mortuary, Patient Affairs (bereavement administration team), ward staff
and external providers such as Funeral Directors and Cemetery and Crematorium staff as
appropriate.
 Respect and maintain client confidentiality, recording appropriate data and updating client records within Trust systems subject to consent and within legal and Trust frameworks for Information Governance.
• Contribute to a range of education and training initiatives including multi-faith teaching within the chaplaincy and hospital community.
• Develop and maintain constructive working relationships with multi-professional colleagues and faith communities to design, deliver and evaluate care and treatment across organisational, faith, and professional boundaries. This will include attendance at Multi-Disciplinary meetings.
• Demonstrate a pro-active commitment to team working, collaboration and development, including sharing knowledge, skills, and pastoral care for the benefit of all.
• Support SPaRC Chaplaincy Volunteers as required in agreement with the Lead Chaplain.
• Support hospital staff including at times of personal anxiety, crisis, loss, or bereavement as part of the staff wellbeing and support offering.
• Promote awareness about the availability and role of SPaRC services throughout the Trust.
• Help maintain the Sanctuary area at Gate 30 as a place for prayer, worship, meditation, reflection and peace, and as a resource centre for SPaRC
• Actively support, contribute, engage, and embed the SPaRC Strategic Plan, SPaRC workplans, service reviews and developments within the Hospital Group.
• Continually review and evaluate personal, team and departmental practices to ensure quality assured, evidence-based, and values-based care is offered.
• Undertake, engage with, evaluate, and apply relevant surveys, audits or research and reflective
practice learning with other members of the SPaRC and healthcare teams to support best practice.
• Implement chaplaincy service policies and relevant Trust policies and contributes to the development on new departmental policies.
• Maintain compliance with Trust corporate induction, essential training requirements and appraisals, including annual update training and appropriate SPaRC training sessions as
agreed from time to time.
• Participate and contribute to one to one, team meetings, reflective practice and appraisal meetings.
• Give attention to maintaining personal spirituality and beliefs and continuing personal development.
• Actively participate in and attend regular external Pastoral Supervision in accordance with a separate contract for this.
• Contribute to the wider Patient Experience Strategy and workplans.
• Maintain good standing and endorsement with the post holder’s faith body.


This advert closes on Monday 25 Aug 2025