Job responsibilities
Clinical
To be professionally and legally accountable for all aspects of own work and that work delegated to support staff.
To undertake a comprehensive assessment of patients referred to the service, including those presenting with diverse problems or complex multi pathologies: using a high level of clinical reasoning and assessment techniques to provide an accurate clinical diagnosis.
To utilise an extensive knowledge of evidence based practice and treatment options to select and deliver a specialised physiotherapy programme to individual patients and plan their successful discharge.
To take responsibility for a delegated caseload, ensuring that the other professionals are involved as required.
To ensure that patients and carers are involved in the planning of their care, using negotiation skills as appropriate
To assess patient understanding of treatment proposals, gain valid informed consent and have the capacity to work within a legal framework with patients who lack capacity to consent to treatment.
Use a range of verbal and non-verbal communication tools to communicate effectively with patients and carers to progress rehabilitation and treatment programmes. This will include patients who may have difficulties in understanding or communicating.
When working in community and domiciliary settings, to work safely as lone practitioner with telephone support from a more senior physiotherapist as required.
To be responsible for maintaining accurate comprehensive patient treatment records in line with Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) /HCPC standards of practice and EH/BEHMHT policies and to communicate assessment and treatment results to the appropriate disciplines in the form of reports and letters.
Represent physiotherapy service and/or individual patients at meetings, or case conferences, to ensure delivery of a co-ordinated multidisciplinary service, and integrate physiotherapy treatment into the over arching care package. This will include discussion of patient care, patient progress and involvement in discharge planning.
Provide skilled physiotherapy advice to others regarding the management and care of patients.
To offer supervision and support to assistant and TI staff within the service as required and to alert line manager if any significant concerns are identified.
To use relevant clinical outcome measures to demonstrate efficacy of intervention.
Apply a sound knowledge of clinical governance and risk management both to own caseload and that delegated to support staff.
Professional
To be responsible for maintaining own competency to practice through relevant CPD activities and maintain a CPD portfolio which reflects personal development.
To implement knowledge of evidence based physiotherapy practice, developing a more specialist knowledge of particular conditions and patient types.
Where appropriate to be responsible for supervising student physiotherapists to graduate level on physiotherapeutic skills and knowledge with over all supervision and direction from more senior staff.
To assist in the teaching, and contribute to the performance assessment and appraisal of newly qualified physiotherapists and TIs.
Undertake evidence-based projects.
Participate in the staff appraisal scheme as an appraisee and be responsible for complying with agreed personal development programmes to meet individual and service objectives.
Where appropriate, to undertake the appraisal of more junior staff, assistant and TI staff.
Undertake measurement and evaluation of own work and current practices through the use of evidence based practice projects, audit and outcome measures, either individually or as part of a team with more senior physiotherapists.
Be an active member of the in-service training programme, attending tutorials, individual training sessions, external courses and peer review sessions as appropriate and as identified in own PDP.
Be actively involved in relevant professional clinical groups, CSP Clinical Interest Groups, Peer Review Groups and other professional development activities such as journal clubs.
Organisational
To be responsible for organising and planning own clinical caseload to meet service and patient priorities. Readjusting plans as situations change/arise.
To optimise the over all effective and efficient use of clinical and organisational skills and resources to ensure that you are highly responsive to clinical and local service priorities and needs.
To undertake the accurate collection of data for use in service reporting, audit and for monitoring the Service level agreement. In particular to complete RiO/other patient based system data in a timely fashion, fully complying with data quality requirements.
To keep patient and other confidential data secure in line with Trust policy.
Be responsible for the safe and competent use of equipment, through teaching and supervision of practice.
Cover other senior staff in their absence, allocating and organising the work of more junior staff and assistant staff to meet service priorities on a daily basis.
To communicate regularly and effectively with other members of the physiotherapy service in order to ensure seamless physiotherapy provision to patients moving between different areas of the service.
To be aware of Health and Safety aspects of your work and implement any policies, which may be required to improve the safety of your work area, including your prompt recording and reporting of accidents to senior staff, and ensuring that equipment use is safe.
To be aware of and support any Community Physiotherapy and Adult Therapies service plans.
To comply with the organisational and departmental policies and procedures and to be involved in the reviewing and updating as appropriate.
To undertake any other duties that might be considered appropriate by the Community Physiotherapy service manager or Adult Therapies Manager.
Effort
Carry out assessments and treatments of patients with moderate physical, and significant mental and emotional effort on a daily basis.
To manage the pressure resulting from frequent interruptions and requests from other professionals that require thoughtful, timely and decisive action and which necessitate adjustment and re-prioritisation of the work plan for self and team.
On a daily basis to implement decisions on allocation of limited resources which directly affect level of physiotherapy intervention to specific patients and have to justify those decisions to patients, carers and others.
To undertake therapeutic manual handling in compliance with Trust manual handling policies and local guidance at all times.
To deal sensitively with patients and carers who have high levels of anxiety and aggression E.g. caused by loss of mobility and independence, cognitive impairment e.g. dementia or learning difficulties.
To interact with patients through an interpreter when English is not the patients first language
When working in a community setting, to work as lone practitioner with telephone support from a more senior physiotherapist as required. In these instances the working environment is out of your control. E.g. may be cramped, poorly lit and therefore not suitable for all treatment and interventions
The job involves the potential for regular exposure to unpleasant working conditions on a regular (daily basis) e.g. bodily fluids including sputum, vomit, urine, and occasional exposure to fleas, lice, verbal and physical aggression.
