Senior Research Nurse - Autopsy Liaison Nurse
Posted 2 days 7 hours ago by NHS
The closing date is 11 December 2025
An exciting opportunity has arisen for the appointment of a Band 7 nurse to join the team at Clinical Ageing Research Unit in order to work with the established Autopsy Liaison team at Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource. Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource is a large established research tissue bank based within Newcastle University Translational and Clinical Research Institute at Newcastle University's Health Innovation Neighbourhood. The nurse team plays a key role in facilitating the donation of well characterised brain and other tissues by liaising with potential donors, their families and other professionals involved. The successful applicant will be able to demonstrate excellent clinical skills and experience in the field of dementia/neurodegenerative disease research as well as the ability to deal with very sensitive issues and situations and problem solve under time pressure. The postholder will have responsibility for the management of the local Brains for Dementia Research cohort (approx. 200 participants) carrying out home visits across the north east to complete a standardised annual neuropsychology assessment and collect other clinical data as well as working flexibly as part of a team to arrange tissue donations from those registered with NBTR and sometimes ad hoc donors.
- Interview Date Monday 12 January 2026
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
Main duties of the job- Maintain overall responsibility for the Brains for Dementia Research (BDR) cohort, scheduling & completing assessments in a timely fashion, liaising with participants, families & external agencies & organizing blood sampling from suitable donors as necessary
- Ensure compliance with BDR research protocol and provision of standard metrics as required by managers and funders. Liaise with other BDR centres
- Ensure compliance with relevant ethical & legal principles including Good Clinical Practice, Mental capacity Act and Human Tissue Act
- Work as part of the NBTR Autopsy liaison team, liaising with prospective donors & their families to ensure that all donations take place with fully informed consent
- Take part in out of hours cover ensuring prompt responses to donor families notifying NBTR of death of a potential donor
- At time of donation, to work with donor families, funeral directors, mortuaries, GPs, Medical Examiners and pathologists to facilitate tissue donation in the required time scale
- Use advanced communication skills to participate in a variety of public engagement & educational events to a range of audiences
- Establish and maintain good working relationships & open channels of communication with participants, relatives, project management teams, supporting clinical and non-clinical departments within the Trust, other hospitals as well as commercial and non commercial bodies (e.g the voluntary sector) in order to communicate complex information effectively
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.
With around 2 million contacts with patients every year, we deliver care from:
- Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI)
- Freeman Hospital
- Newcastle Dental Hospital
- Newcastle Fertility Centre
- Northern Centre for Cancer Care, North Cumbria
- Northern Genetics Service
These include a range of flagship services which deliver cutting edge care (supported by state of the art diagnostic services in both radiology and pathology) and are a catalyst for innovation to support pioneering clinical practice in the NHS.
We also have offices at Regent Point in Gosforth and community sites.
Please see attached information on what Staff Benefits we have to offer at our Trust under 'Documents to download' or 'Supporting documents'.
For further information on The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust please visit: Careers Newcastle Hospitals NHS Newcastle Hospitals and Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Job responsibilitiesThe post is available at 100% FTE. Hours are flexible by negotiation and part time applications will also be considered. The postholder(s) will be expected to participate in a weekend/holiday on call rota (approximately 1:4) and have a driving licence and use of a car for work purposes is desirable.
- Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource is an established research tissue bank run by Newcastle University to support research into dementia and neurodegenerative disease. It receives core funding from the Medical Research Council; Brains for Dementia Research and the Biomedical centre for Ageing and is a participant of both the MRC and Brains for Dementia Research networks.
- The Autopsy Liaison Nurse plays a key role in facilitating the donation of well characterised brain and other tissue to NBTR. The principle purpose of this role is to approach study participants and their families for eventual brain donation at autopsy. Both prior to and following the death of a potential brain donor, the post holder will be required to liaise with the families and professionals involved to ensure that ethical and legal consent is obtained and to make the practical arrangements which will enable standardised clinical assessments of participants and ultimately tissue donation to take place. The role will also involve provision of education and training to members of the public and staff about various aspects of tissue donation for research and recruitment and publicity activities.
You will be redirected to Trac to apply for the vacancy. Please expand the job details section and read all of the information before applying for the vacancy.
Person Specification Meets All Criteria- RGN (Clinical) or RMN
- BSc in health/biological/research related subject
- Substantial experience at Band 6 or above (to masters level equivalent) working within a clinical research environment
- Must have relevant and recent experience with patients suffering from dementia and/or neurodegenerative disease and their families
- Excellent cross disciplinary/interagency communication skills and ability to facilitate collaborative working relationships
- Advanced organisational skills and ability to manage multiple projects at various stages of development & organisation
- Broad clinical knowledge, coupled with expertise in one or more clinical field(s)
- Ability to work autonomously while co coordinating and liaising with different aspects of the project
- Management skills including experience of team leadership and team building initiatives
- Demonstrate an ability to integrate nursing knowledge and skills with the research aspects of the job
- Evidence of experience related to information retrieval and research application
- An understanding of the application of research within the Clinical and Research Governance agenda
- Competence in standard PC packages (Word, Excel, Outlook)
- Motivated and enthusiastic
- Ability to appraise junior staff through performance review
- Ability to initiate and drive original research
- MSc in Health/Biological/Research related subject
- Competence in research/database related PC packages (Excel, Access, SPSS)
- Experience in research ethical submissions i.e. COREC
- Car owner/driver
- Bereavement training
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust