Consultant in Palliative Medicine

Job overview

We are seeking to appoint an enthusiastic, motivated, forward thinking Consultant in Palliative Medicine to an innovative community post in Bolton. The post holder will be joining the service at a time of exciting change and development to improve the provision of palliative care to the residents of Bolton.

The post holder will be working predominantly in the community setting, although the service is integrated, so it also provides hospital based services. This includes a proactive emergency department service  by two senior clinical practitioners (8a), to identify and manage unmet palliative care needs and identify people who are sick enough to die in order to start advance care planning. This service has been shown to reduce admissions, with a low re-admission rate, and reduced length of stay. The service has now been given the opportunity to expand this service into the community setting.

The post holder will work alongside a consultant colleague in the community setting, to support the newly appointed community senior clinical practitioners and a specialty doctor. The service is developing to deliver a 7 day rapid response service and ‘Hospital at Home’ virtual ward provided by the palliative care senior clinical practitioners, alongside advanced clinical practitioners in the Admissions Avoidance Team and other specialist teams running virtual wards. The post holder will need to provide leadership and service development support in setting up these services .

Main duties of the job

The post holder will be joining the service at a time of exciting change and development and will be expected to engage, lead and drive these changes to prove the benefits and further expand the team to support the service.

The post holder will be working predominantly in the community setting, although the service is integrated, so it also provides hospital based services.

The post holder will work alongside a consultant colleague in the community setting, to support the newly appointed community senior clinical practitioners and a specialty doctor.

The service is developing to deliver a 7 day rapid response service and ‘Hospital at Home’ virtual ward provided by the senior clinical practitioners, alongside advanced clinical practitioners in the Admissions Avoidance Team and other specialist teams running virtual wards. The post holder will need to provide leadership and service development support in setting these services up.

The on-call requirements for this post are yet to be determined, as weekend working to support the new service needs to be piloted, so there is a requirement to be flexible and engage with these pilots. The current consultants provide 1:5 frequency 2nd on-call cover to Bolton Hospice.

There is currently no requirement to provide an outpatient clinic.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see documents enclosed.

The post holder will be expected to engage, lead and drive changes to prove the benefits of expanding the service in a community setting and further develop the team to support the service.