CYPS Community Respiratory Physiotherapist

Job overview

The post holder will be a Band 7 Physiotherapist specialising in respiratory care within paediatrics and participating as a member of the Gloucestershire Children’s Physiotherapy team independently managing a specialised clinical caseload.  This involves assessment, advising, planning, delivering and evaluating treatment for a complex caseload of children and their families.  They may also co-ordinate a local team on a day-to-day basis taking responsibility for delegation, supervision, development and teaching.

This role is a post within a well established community team. It is an exciting and evolving role with the opportunity to impact and support patients and their families in their home environments. The wider team is supportive and dynamic, with a wealth of expertise to draw on. Clinical and operational supervision, as well as support to attend wider networks are encouraged and provided.

Main duties of the job

The purpose of this post is to provide highly specialist physiotherapy outside of the hospital setting, for children presenting with complex respiratory needs.

This role will include ongoing maintenance physiotherapy programmes, manual techniques, suction and other airway clearance techniques, including suction.  The post holder will have the opportunity to work closely with the paediatric respiratory physiotherapists in the hospital setting, as well as working with neuromuscular physiotherapists and the wider respiratory multidisciplinary team.  The post holder will collaboratively develop the service and provide a source of expertise locally, providing education and support for parents/carers and community staff caring for these children. The post holder will provide leadership within the Children & Young People’s Physiotherapy Service providing, co-ordinating, developing, auditing and evaluating the service ensuring it is evidence based and in line with Clinical Governance requirements. This post is community based and the post holder will carry his/her own caseload and at times will be expected to work independently in locations away from base.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To undertake all aspects of clinical duties as an autonomous practitioner
• To plan and organise own work load

• To be professionally and legally accountable for a designated patient caseload and to decide priorities for own work area, balancing other patient related and professional demands
• To manage clinical risk within own patient caseload
• To assess patients’ capacity, gain valid informed consent to treatment and where such capacity is lacking/absent to work within a legal framework in the management of the patient
• To undertake the comprehensive and accurate respiratory assessment of children, including those with a complex presentation, using investigative, analytical and clinical reasoning skills
• To formulate individualised respiratory management programmes, utilising a wide range of treatment skills and options to plan a specialised programme of care for use in the community
• To undertake evaluation of patient progress, reassess and alter physiotherapy management programmes as required
• To provide spontaneous and planned advice, problem solving expertise, teaching and instruction to families, carers, other disciplines and agencies to promote understanding of the aims of physiotherapy and to ensure continuation of the respiratory management programme across all areas of the child’s daily environment
• To participate in and where appropriate initiate multidisciplinary/multi-agency team meetings and case conferences to ensure the co-ordination of patient care.  This may include the review of patient progress and discharge planning
• To ensure accurate, comprehensive and up to date clinical records are maintained in accordance with Trust guidance and professionally agreed criteria
• To participate in the collection of data for audit purposes
• To produce comprehensive patient related reports for other disciplines or agencies relating to assessment findings and/or treatment/management outcomes
• To undertake the measurement and evaluation of own work through audit, outcome measurement, the application of evidence-based practice and research as appropriate
• To identify and initiate audit projects to review current clinical practice
• To participate in clinics appropriate to the child’s physiotherapy respiratory management
• To work to Trust and Chartered Society of Physiotherapy clinical guidelines and have a good working knowledge of relevant national standards to which quality of practice should be monitored
• To assist the Service lead with the prioritisation and management of the departmental patient caseload