StR Higher Clinical Fellow in Neonatal Transport

Job overview

The South West Neonatal Advice & Retrieval (SONAR) team is the neonatal transport service covering the South West Neonatal Operational Delivery Network (ODN) area, from Gloucester to Truro. This region has a birth rate of over 45,000 deliveries per year. The SoNAR South team runs 12 hours a day Monday to Friday. and undertakes approximately 220 journeys per year. The service covers both acute transfers and repatriations between the 12 neonatal units in the region (St Michael’s &Southmead in Bristol, Plymouth, Bath, Taunton, Swindon, Gloucester, Exeter, Truro, Torbay, Barnstaple and Yeovil) as well as acute transfers into Bristol Children’s Hospital for subspecialty opinions. We are part of the SoNAR transport service, and work closely with SoNAR North, which is based in Bristol.

The SONAR South team is based within Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. The NICU at Derriford is within the same building and is a tertiary level neonatal intensive care unit. The transport team is able to deliver cooling, nitric oxide and HFOV during transfer.

Main duties of the job

Clinical:

• Management and delivery of care to critically ill infants on the neonatal unit in a tier 2 capacity on a rotational basis
• Involvement in the transport of term and preterm newborn infants, including those who are critically ill, as part of the SoNAR
• Partaking in the daily ring around and liaison with colleagues in surrounding neonatal units, taking and recording referrals into SoNAR

Governance:

• Participating in clinical audit of service provision in keeping with key performances indices for neonatal services
• Reviewing of clinical incidents and completing exception reporting
• Development and implementation of clinical guidelines and protocols.
• Involvement in relevant quality improvement programmes
• Close working with clinical governance leads in the conducting of mortality reviews

Research, Teaching and Training:

• Collaboration with the clinical education and simulation teams in the conducting of multidisciplinary educational sessions
• Coordination of neonatal road shows in neighbouring units with the support of SoNAR leads
• Where possible to collaborate with academic and clinical colleagues to enhance UHP’s research portfolio
• Other areas of relevant special interest will be supported eg Cardiology, NLS/ARNI instruction, simulation etc

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The successful candidate will be trained in order to become proficient and competent at delivering the majority of transfers on their own (with consultant support) and where necessary a consultant may accompany the fellow / registrar on the transfer.

Knowledge and skills gained during this placement would include effective transport triage, call conferencing, prioritisation of journeys, appropriate team composition, enhanced patient assessment, management of the critically ill neonates during transfer and other transport related clinical skills. They would be expected to have good communication and leadership skills in order to facilitate good handover of information between units.

The successful candidate would also be expected to undertake audit and service evaluations to improve the service.

The successful applicant will also have some duties on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Derriford Hospital. The service undertakes approximately 3500 Intensive Care and High Dependency Care days and in around 4500 Special / Transitional Care days per year. The service benefits from a team of 8 Consultant Neonatologists, 1 Nurse Consultant, 9 ANNPs, 6 ENNPs as well as a two tier team of junior medical staff whose cover duties are exclusively to the neonatal service. The unit supports the nursing team to train as Qualified in Speciality (QIS) adhering to BAPM staffing guidance.

All successful candidates must exhibit personal characteristics of the highest standard. These include honesty, reliability, enthusiasm, initiative, resilience, conscientiousness, and an insight into their own abilities.