Referral Nurse at Penda Health

Role Summary

• When a Penda patient needs care we can't give them on-site, what happens next matters just as much as everything that came before it. That's where you come in.
• As our Referral Nurse, you'll build and own Penda's referral network across Nairobi, Kiambu, and Kajiado, ensuring that patients who need care beyond primary level reach the right facility, quickly and safely. The Referral Nurse establishes and maintains working relationships with liaison staff at receiving facilities, supports clinicians during active high-acuity referrals, and tracks referral outcomes to identify and close system gaps. Success looks like a referral network with documented agreements, rapid acceptance of urgent referrals, and a return-to-Penda pathway that ensures no patient's care ends at the point of referral. The role works closely with Penda clinical teams, ambulance providers, hospital liaison teams, the SHA provider relations team, and community health promoters.

What You'll Do

Network Development

• Maps every hospital, specialist clinic, diagnostic centre, and maternity facility within reasonable reach of each Penda location, covering Level 4, Level 5, and Level 6 public hospitals, private hospitals, faith-based facilities, and specialist providers.
• Establishes and maintains named relationships with clinical liaison staff, admissions teams, casualty nurses, and ward coordinators at each facility, and for high volume referral facilities, negotiates referral agreements, MOUs, and informal arrangements that define response times, communication channels, and escalation contacts.
• Owns a living referral directory for clinical and non-clinical staff, updating it whenever contacts change, facility services change, or new facilities open.

Referral Coordination & Patient Advocacy

• Coordinates urgent referrals across Penda's network and advocates for patients requiring higher levels of care, using relationships and system knowledge to unblock barriers to acceptance and admission.
• Arranges appropriate clinical accompaniment for high-acuity transfers and liaises with national and private ambulance providers to ensure transport coordination does not delay patient care.

System & Quality Improvement

• Tracks every referral made across the Penda network, including destination, receipt status, and outcome, and monitors referral acceptance rates against agreed facility standards.
• Identifies recurring failure points, such as facilities that consistently refuse referrals, night-time transport gaps, or conditional referrals, and proposes and implements practical solutions.
• Develops and maintains a standard referral documentation toolkit (referral letters, SBAR communication guides, discharge summary request templates) and trains clinical officers, nurses, and non-clinical staff on emergency communication and referral procedures.

Continuity of Care & Follow-Up

• Manages the return-to-Penda pathway, working with clinical and call centre teams to ensure patients referred out are followed up, recalled for chronic disease management where appropriate, and not lost to care after discharge.
• Partners with community health promoters to locate and recall patients who missed a referral appointment or were discharged from hospital without follow-up.

Culture

• Models Penda's values of passion for patient wellbeing, appreciation for colleagues, open-mindedness, trustworthiness, and reliability in every interaction with Penda staff and partner facilities, building the consistent, dependable presence that referral relationships depend on.

What You'll Bring

• Registered Nurse with a current, valid practising licence from the Kenya Nursing Council.
• At least 4 years of post-registration clinical experience.
• At least 2 years in referral coordination, patient navigation, hospital liaison, or case management — think hospital triage, a referral unit, an NGO health programme, an HMO, or a high-acuity outpatient facility.
• Experience across both public and private health facilities in Kenya, and a real understanding of how each one works.
• Confidence with SBAR communication, emergency referral protocols, and IMCI/emergency triage.
• The judgment to make fast, sound calls under pressure, and the people skills to build trust with everyone from casualty nurses to hospital administrators to anxious families.
• A knack for solving problems when the easy answer is "no."

What Success Looks Like

• Referral acceptance rate (proportion of urgent referrals successfully received by a facility).
• Time from decision to refer to patient departure from the Penda clinic.
• Proportion of referrals where appropriate accompaniment or transport was arranged.
• Clinician satisfaction with referral support (quarterly).
• Documented referral agreements in place at a defined number of facilities per quarter.
• Evidence of training delivered to clinical and non-clinical staff.