Trainee Advanced Clinical Practitioner

Job responsibilities

The Older Persons Medicine department are looking to recruit Advanced Clinical Practitioners (ACP) at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, to work in our Older Persons Medicine Same Day Emergency Care unit and on the acute older person medicine wards.

The OSDEC unit is a service set up to manage acutely unwell older patients presenting via the Emergency Department, General Practitioner or South Central Ambulance Service.

The team consists of Consultant Geriatricians, Geriatric Medicine specialist Registrar, Doctors in training, OSDEC nurses, Frailty Specialist nurses and a Frailty Pharmacist. Our aim is to enhance this team further with ACPs to ensure timely identification and assessment of suitable OSDEC patients leading to early senior decision making.

The service is open 8-8, 7 days a week. The unit consists of 8 beds.

The proposal is rotations on the OSDEC and acute wards, with the aim to become a support both fully qualified and training ACPs within the department.

The acute ward aspect of the role would be to work with the ward MDT to review inpatients both on the short stay unit and/or acute OPM wards. The responsibility involves linking with the MDT, working along side the SpR and junior doctors under the supervision of the ward consultants. Day to day tasks include attending ward round, review acutely unwell patients, assisting discharge.

A trainee ACP will spend 80% of their contracted hours delivering direct clinical patient care and the remaining 20%of their contracted hours will be spent undertaking supportive activities, such as appraisal, clinical audit, teaching, self-development and research.

Trust Organisational Expectations

The post holder will:

1. Proactively and positively contribute to the successful overall performance of the Trust.

2. Deliver excellent levels of customer service to all patients/visitors and staff at the Trust.

3. Develop effective ways of working and create strong partnerships and relationships with all stakeholders to support the implementation of the Governments policies on Health.

4. Develop an organisational culture that fosters collaborative working among all staff groups, to ensure a focused commitment to delivering quality services and outcomes.

5. Act as an advocate for the Trust & its contribution to the Health Service arena through creating effective partnerships and relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

6. Comply with corporate governance structure in keeping with the principles and standards set out by the Trust.

7. Support the Trust culture of collaborative, flexible cross-team working and commitment to delivering quality services and outcomes, which support the Governments policies on public health

8. If your employment is to a post that requires you to be registered with a professional body, the continuation of your employment is conditional upon you continuing to be registered with the appropriate professional body. The Trust will require evidence of current registration.

9. In compliance with the Trust's practices and procedures associated with the control of infection, you are required to:

Adhere to Trust Infection Control Policies assuring compliance with all defined infection control standards at all times.

Conduct hand hygiene in accordance with Trust policy, challenging those around you that do not.

Challenge poor practice that could lead to the transmission of infection.

10. Proactively, meaningfully and consistently demonstrate the Trust Values in your every day practice, decision making and interactions with patients and colleagues.

Specific Core Functions Clinical

1. To deliver and participate in the care of patients within scope of practice

2. Undertake comprehensive clinical consultations with patients using own clinical judgement to assess, examine, diagnose, plan and evaluate care for patients presenting with an undifferentiated diagnosis

3. Ability to request and interpret radiology requests within the guidelines and protocols for the clinical area

4. As an independent non-medical prescriber the post holder will prescribe and review medications within the practitioners competency and scope of practice for therapeutic effectiveness, appropriate to patients needs and in accordance with evidence based practice

5. The postholder will advocate and maintain a nursing/ AHP culture which is open to change, new ideas, concepts and innovations

6. Effectively lead and monitor the delivery of care to ensure the individual needs of the patients are met in a safe and timely manner

7. Provide information to patients, relatives and carers regarding the treatment options assessments, investigations and follow up

8. Promote and lead the development, implementation and review of standards, policies, procedures and clinical guidelines

9. Act as a role model promoting and demonstrating the standards of care expected and challenging poor practice.

10. Effectively lead and motivate staff in the provision of care and future service development

11. Show evidence of continued adherence to the four pillars of advance practice

12. Have extensive clinical experience of working within an acute medical environment

13. Maintain own clinical development by keeping abreast of new treatments and techniques as per service need.

14. To improve the quality of patient experience by identifying and meeting individual clinical needs of patients.

15. To rigorously review all aspects of the patients plan of care and identify and address issues that may occur

16. Contribute to the review and development of integrated care pathways and clinical guidelines to ensure a standardized approach to patients care.

17. Practice with confidence and competence within professional guidelines ( E.g NMC, HCPC, GPhC)

18. To ensure that accurate documentation and records of patient care are kept.

19. To provide specialist advice on patient care to the healthcare team taking into account all aspects of clinical governance, and act as a specialist resource within the Trust.

20. To lead the implementation and development of assessment systems, processes and tools within scope of practice and clinical / assessment areas.

21. Ability to adapt specialist clinical knowledge and skills to different clinical settings and influence service delivery and patient care.

22. Actively implement effective systems and processes for infection control management and relevant audit within their clinical areas.

23. Highly sensitive and contentious information may be communicated orally or other means (i.e writing) to work colleagues, staff, patients, clients, carers, public or other contacts external to the department or division. Including other NHS organisations or suppliers

24. Understand and be able to communicate information to patients and families where there are barriers to communication and / or understanding. This may be due to cultural and / or language differences, or physical or mental special needs, or due to age (i.e. children, elderly or frail patients /clients).

25. Communication to patients, clients and carers may need to be provided orally, in writing, electronically, using sign language, or other verbal or nonverbal forms.

26. The post involves exposure to frequent distressing or emotional circumstances. This includes imparting unpleasant news to patients, families, carers and staff caring for the terminally ill and deceased patient and dealing with distressed relatives and families in stressful situations.

27. This post involves occasional / frequent exposure to highly unpleasant conditions depending on the specialty / division in which the role is undertaken. This may include frequent exposure to bodily fluids, soiled linen and the risk of verbal and actual physical violence.

28. For clinical skills relevant to the ACP role sees the ACP Plan for the specialty. The ACP Plan outlines the clinical procedures undertaken by the ACPs which will be different for each specialty and clinical area.

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• Strong clinical decision maker.
• Demonstrates excellent leadership, organisational, time management and motivational skills.
• Advocate to patients.
• Ability to identify training needs of self and others.
• Ability to apply critical thinking independent judgement to identify solutions to variable problems.
• Ability to organise and delegate appropriately.
• Excellent communicator of complex matters at all levels.
• Ability to communicate complex or sensitive information about wellbeing to anxious patients and relatives.
• Ability to build effective working relationships with clinicians and Managers at all levels.
• Effective partnership with the wider multidisciplinary team.
• Excellent computer and IT skills.
• Willingness to develop and learn new skills.
• Enthusiastic & highly motivated.
• Organised.
• Evidence of reflective practice.

Desirable

• Evidence of knowledge or learning related medical investigations and or interpretation of investigation findings.
• Evidence of Knowledge or learning regarding medications e.g. reasons for & safe prescribing.
• Theoretical and or practical knowledge of a wide range of approaches to the management of the patient caseload, demonstrated by advanced clinical reasoning and experience.

Experience

Essential

• Evidence or experience of working at a senior level of management and or a leadership role within medicine.
• Relevant transferable skills.
• Taken a leading role with quality improvement projects and or service. development including participation in clinical audit.
• Can clearly demonstrate evidence-based practice in current role.
• Effective networking with colleagues at all levels, experience or working across professional and organisational boundaries.
• Ability to demonstrate commitment to high quality patient care.

Desirable

• Evidence of any advanced clinical skills e.g. prescribing, history taking, physical assessments and clerking of patients presenting with undifferentiated diagnoses.
• Competent in venepuncture, cannulation and Arterial blood gas sampling, urethral catheterisation or any other competencies related to ward based procedures relevant to caring for medical patients.
• Evidence of innovative practice developments and significant achievements gained.

Qualifications

Essential

• Minimum second-class honours bachelors degree in appropriate discipline.
• Current registration with NMC, HCPC or other professional body and any other relevant post registration specialist qualification.
• Experience of working in a senior clinical role within an acute environment.
• Leadership experience.
• Teaching experience.
• Minimum of 5 years post registration experience.

Desirable

• Advanced or intermediate Life Support Provider.
• Evidence of post-bachelors degree study.
• Leadership development programme or training.
• Recognised teaching qualification.
• Minimum of 2 years Older Persons Medicine or equivalent experience.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).