Consultant in Palliative Care

Job overview

This is a replacement, permanent 8PA post which presents an exciting opportunity to contribute to a high quality, patient centered service in a supportive multidisciplinary team.

The post will cover both acute hospital inpatient work and work within community settings, ensuring patients can be seen and supported where ever they are.

The role involves delivering expert clinical care, providing specialist advice to healthcare professionals, participating in the on-call rota, and supporting the development of innovative services that enable patients to receive care closer to home.

The successful candidate will join a team of consultants in Palliative medicine supported by nurse specialists in both acute and community settings. There are opportunities to develop sub specialty interest where this contributes to and complements the department and Trusts' service needs. There are undergraduate & postgraduate education and research opportunities available.

Main duties of the job

To share with colleagues’ responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Palliative Medicine department.

To provide direct and indirect specialist Palliative Medicine advice and support to hospital inpatients in West Suffolk Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

To provide direct and indirect specialist Palliative Medicine advice and support to patients in the community, in conjunction with colleagues at St Nicholas Hospice Care

To provide Palliative Medicine consultant input within the community through joint working with other specialties and other providers

To develop and deliver palliative care education to health care professionals at all levels

To participate in the consultant telephone 2nd on call rota across Suffolk and Great Yarmouth & Waveney

To contribute to the planning and further development of palliative care services in the area and across the ICB

To actively participate in both departmental and Trust matters concerning Clinical Governance and audit

To fulfill obligations relating to continuing medical education, professional development, appraisal and revalidation and to keep up to date with new developments in the field of palliative medicine.

Please see Job Description for full vacancy details

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will work within the Medicine directorate, with managerial responsibility to the Clinical Director. This post is a replacement.

There are currently four Consultants in Palliative Medicine (3.4 WTE) working within West Suffolk, supporting patients in the hospital, hospice and community.

The hospital palliative care team support over 1200 patients a year. The team is currently staffed by 5.7 WTE CNS’s, with a Band 8a Team Lead/Practice Development Nurse.

The hospital team has close links with the chaplaincy team, the Acute Oncology Team, the discharge planning team and other specialities such as Oncology, Haematology, Frailty, Cardiology and Renal.

The Trust delivers services to patients seven days a week and aims to provide equality of treatment and outcome regardless of the day of the week. To meet these aims and changing service requirements, the Trust may need you either to work temporarily outside of your core hours or to permanently change your core working days and hours. The Trust will give you reasonable notice, where possible, of temporary changes to your days or hours of work and will consult with you and/or your staff representatives about substantial permanent changes, but ultimately, these are changes which may be required of you.

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.