Locum Consultant in Palliative Medicine

Job responsibilities

THE POST:

This is a six-month 8PA locum Consultant in Palliative Medicine post to work within the LTHT Hospital Palliative Care Advisory Team, and to take a lead on quality improvement. The post will support earlier senior/consultant clinical reviews, increased teaching commitment, and development of specialist expertise in managing palliative care symptoms and issues associated with the innovative therapies developed and provided by a tertiary centre. The post holder will be actively engaged in the extensive undergraduate and postgraduate education programme. This will include teaching students from the University of Leeds Medical School.

BACKGROUND

Leeds Teaching Hospitals is one the largest teaching hospital trusts in Europe, with access to leading clinical expertise and medical technology. We care for people from all over the country as well as the 780,000 residents of Leeds itself. The Trust has a budget of £1 billion. Our 17,000 staff ensure that every year we see and treat 1,500,000 people in our 2,000 beds or out-patient settings, comprising 100,000 day cases, 125,000 in-patients, 260,000 A&E visits and 1,050,000 out-patient appointments. We operate from 7 hospitals on 5 sites all linked by the same vision, philosophy and culture to be the best for specialist and integrated care.

Our vision is based on The Leeds Way, which is a clear statement of who we are and what we believe, founded on values of working that were put forward by our own staff. Our values are to be:

Patient-centred

Fair

Collaborative

Accountable

Empowered

We believe that by being true to these values, we will consistently achieve and continuously improve our results in relation to our goals, which are to be:

1. The best for patient safety, quality and experience

2. The best place to work

3. A centre of excellence for specialist services, education, research and innovation

4. Hospitals that offer seamless, integrated care

5. Financially sustainable

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is part of the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT), a collaborative of the NHS hospital trusts from across West Yorkshire and Harrogate working together to provide the best possible care for our patients.

OBJECTIVES OF THE POST

1. To provide consultant supervision of the SPCT caseload, working closely with consultant colleagues and with a well-established and highly experienced multiprofessional team. The consultants are available for specialist telephone advice, to assess patients and to see relatives, to provide joint training visits, and to provide advice to the weekly MDTs.

2. To build closer working relationships with ward-based teams

3. To supervise the Palliative Medicine speciality doctors, speciality registrars and other doctors in training on rotation to the SPCT.

4. To participate in the educational programme of the SPCT, particularly postgraduate medical education across LTHT, and to establish and maintain relationships with other education and training providers across LTHT, the University, city and region.

5.To contribute to the service developments, quality improvement work, audit and extensive teaching commitments of the team, and to delivery of the SPCT's strategic goals; their specific focus to be determined by the successful applicant's interests subject to agreement with colleagues.

6. To provide 1:11 Palliative medicine on-call citywide (Leeds community and both hospices in addition to LTHT)

REQUIREMENTS OF THE POST

1. Service Delivery

The Trust expects consultants to deliver clinical service as agreed with commissioners and other stakeholders. This will include:

meeting the objectives of the post (see above)

continuously improving the quality and efficiency of personal and team practice

working with other staff and teams to ensure that the various criteria for service delivery are met, such as

-achieving the best clinical outcomes within the resources available

-waiting times

-infection control standards

Consultants in LTHT are line managed by their specialty Lead Clinician working in conjunction with a Business Manager. This specialty team is then managed alongside a number of other specialties in a Clinical Service (or Support) Unit (CSU) led by a Clinical Director as the responsible person and supported by a full time General Manager and a full time Head of Nursing.

The Clinical Director and their team report operationally to the Chief Operating Officer (COO). The Clinical Director will work closely with the Chief Operating Officers team which includes the Medical Director for Operations, Nurse Director for Operations, Director of Operations, Assistant Directors of Operations (ADOs) and a Performance Team, with each ADO aligned to specific CSUs.

Professionally, consultants report to Dr Hamish McClure, Interim Chief Medical Officer.

2. Quality

The Trust has a programme of activities that are designed to help consultants improve the quality of the service they offer. This includes a range of activities shown below as examples not all activities can be undertaken every year! Consultants are expected to routinely engage in relevant activities in their specialty that are focussed on quality improvement. This participation should be reflected at annual appraisal and job planning and will be discussed in specialties as part of clinical governance programmes and meetings.

Clinical Audit and standard setting

Clinical audit projects

Development and application of agreed clinical guidelines

Ensuring compliance against relevant national specifications, e.g. NICE guidelines

External Peer review and relevant national audits.

Clinical outcome review

Mortality and morbidity review

Monitoring of outcomes reflected in routinely collected data

Participation in clinical coding review and improvement

Improving patient safety

Participation in Trust-wide programmes

Implementation of local improvements as defined in e.g. mortality review

Improving service effectiveness and efficiency

Service or system improvement projects, including small scale change, lean or other recognised improvement methods

Conducting or considering reviews of the evidence to plan better service delivery

Where agreed, working with commissioners to match service delivery with requirements of relevant populations

Improving the patient experience

Implementing service improvements on the basis of individual or service feedback from patients or carers

Raising the profile and impact of patient participation in decisions about their own care

Involvement in understanding and improving the ethical basis of care provided

3. Research

The Trusts Research Strategy encourages all clinicians to participate in high quality, nationally recognised clinical research trials and other well-designed studies, with a particular emphasis on work supported by the National Institute for Health Research. The Trust has a number of major programmes in experimental medicine and applied health research, developed in partnership with the University of Leeds, which reflect particular strengths described in the Strategy and clinicians are encouraged to participate in these programmes.

The Trust also supports bespoke academic development and participation programmes linked to the Research Strategy, including academic mentoring and embedding of clinicians within the major research programmes.

Sessional time required for any participation in research activity will be agreed on commencement and kept under review, but not all consultants will require such sessional time.

4. Teaching

The Trust is a Teaching Hospital and therefore considers the active participation of consultant and other medical staff in teaching and training to be part of our core activities. Not all consultants will have regular and substantial teaching commitments, but all will be involved in related activities from time to time, if only through informal opportunities, for example as part of service quality improvement (see above). It is therefore expected that all consultants will be familiar with the principles of effective teaching and will enable the service and colleagues to fulfil their obligations to learn and teach about effective care.

The remainder of this section concentrates on teaching and training for medical colleagues, but the Trust actively supports and encourages consultant medical staff to participate in and deliver teaching and training to any colleagues, within and outside of the Trust, where this is agreed as an appropriate time commitment.

5. Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

In the discharge of their responsibilities, the consultant will be expected to maintain and update their skills and knowledge through appropriate continuing professional development.

The Trust fully supports the requirement for CPD by the relevant Royal College and the GMC. This essential component of a consultants professional activities will be reviewed during the appraisal process. Time and financial support for these activities will be allowed in accordance with the Trust policy.

6. Leadership

All consultants are senior members of the Trusts staff and are therefore seen by colleagues as leaders. Consultants are expected to make allowance for this, given that the most powerful leadership influence they exert is the example they set.

In addition, the Trust places great emphasis on the role of doctors in leading service improvement and change, both in their normal daily role of delivering care and in relation to specific issues. It is expected that a consultant will lead on specific areas of priority for their service from time to time, as part of their consultant duties. Such departmental or specialty leadership roles would be agreed, for example, in respect of leading or co-ordinating:

clinical governance

quality improvement

appraisal

research

teaching

Experience

Essential

• Must be able to demonstrate a high level of clinical experience and competence in Palliative Medicine in all care settings
• Specifically, he/she must demonstrate higher specialist training in Palliative Medicine
• Evidence of continuous career progression consistent with personal circumstances
• Evidence of the ability to carry out medical research
• Experience in training undergraduate medical students and postgraduate doctors
• Experience of participation in regular clinical audit

Desirable

• Previous experience of supervising research by junior staff
• Experience in multi-professional education. Attendance at Teaching courses/ formal teaching qualification

other criteria

Essential

• Hold full GMC Registration with a license to practice
• Entry on the GMC Specialist Register via: CCT (proposed CCT date must be within 6 months of interview) CESR (or) international applicants should comply with the GMC specialty registration process

Qualifications

Essential

• MB BS, MB ChB or equivalent
• Higher medical qualification (eg MRCP, MRCGP)
• CCT in Palliative Medicine OR inclusion on GMC Specialty Register for palliative medicine / within six months of achieving CCT from a UK palliative medicine training programme at the time of interview

Desirable

• Relevant higher degree

Eligibility, Fitness to practice, and Language Skills

Essential

• Eligible for full registration with the GMC at time of appointment and hold a current licence to practice
• Eligibility to work in the UK
• Is up to date and fit to practise safely
• Should have completed a recognised training programme in Palliative Medicine

Clinical, Academic, and Personal

Essential

• All applicants to have demonstrable skills in written and spoken English adequate to enable effective communication about medical topics with patients and colleagues
• Understanding of current issues in the NHS
• Well organised and skilled in good time management
• Effective interpersonal skills
• Demonstrate ability to relate to and work within a team
• Medically fit to fulfil ALL aspects of the post, and be able to respond quickly to emergencies, as necessary. Meets professional health requirements (in line with GMC standards/Good Medical Practice).

Desirable

• Attendance at recognised management course.

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).