Consultant in Palliative Medicine

Job overview

This is a post for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. The successful candidate will work with the existing palliative medicine consultant and support the Specialist Palliative Care (SPC) and Enhanced supportive Care (ESC) services on both sites of the Trust. The post is part of the Oncology directorate and the post will be based at Maidstone hospital, the main site for Kent Oncology services.

Main duties of the job

• To provide a high standard of care to any patient for whom you have clinical responsibility. This will include any patients referred to you and cared for by you personally or by members of your team, and, in addition, any patients of consultant colleagues when you are covering on-call or for annual leave.
• To participate in clinical and other service activities and development to ensure a high standard of patient care across the Trust.
• To work in close co-operation with other medical, professional and managerial colleagues, both within and outside the speciality, to provide high-quality health care to the Trust’s patients, and to contribute to future thinking about the Trust’s strategic direction.
• To participate fully in and share leadership of the clinical governance of the speciality covering its Trust-wide activities. To attend clinical governance half-days as detailed in the Trust’s Guide to job planning, unless on agreed leave or while attending emergencies.
• To participate actively in departmental audits, sharing co-ordination of audit activities within the department and implementation of change.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• The post-holder will be accountable to the Clinical Director, who in turn is accountable to the Medical Director and the Chief Executive.
• The post-holder will be a member of the Trust Consultant’s Committee and will be expected to represent colleagues at various committees.
• The post-holder will have full clinical responsibility for patients in their care
• The post-holder is expected to communicate widely, including:

Chief of Service

Clinical Director

Consultant Oncologists

Hospital Consultants

Lead nurse for Palliative and End of Life Care

General Manager Kent Oncology Centre

General Manager Specialist Services Division

Cancer Lead Nurse

Oncology Site Managers

Commissioners of Health Services

GPs

Specialist Palliative Care Services

Agencies concerned with Health Care Services and those representing consumers’ interests.

Medical Director

Chief Nurse

Acute oncology Team

Cancer site specific Nurses

Clinical Responsibilities

• To clinically manage patients requiring specialist palliative and enhanced supportive care within MTW.
• To maintain continuing clinical responsibility for the patients in the post-holder’s charge allowing for all proper delegation to, and training of, medical staff.
• It is anticipated that in the future that the post holder may wish to rotate to the role of lead palliative care clinician, this will be facilitated through job planning.
• To participate in and contribute to the Trust and Oncology Centre Clinical Governance programme.
• To participate in Clinical Trials and R&D programmes in order to ensure that clinical practice is evidence based.
• To prepare business cases for new / developmental therapies for network / trust approval.

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.