Trust Fellow in CATS

Job overview

Trust Fellow – posts starting in August and September 2026

The Children's Acute Transport Service (CATS) stabilises & transports critically ill & injured children into intensive care facilities in North Thames. The posts are ideally suited to doctors with backgrounds in paediatric critical care, anaesthesia, or emergency medicine, who wish to consolidate and broaden their experience of paediatric critical care medicine.

The successful applicants will be working as part of a team of 12 specialist registrars/clinical fellows and advanced clinical practitioners. The service currently undertakes about 1000 transports per year with a wide range of paediatric, neonatal surgical and cardiac intensive care cases, including those referred for ECMO support.

Supernumerary flexible time is included in the rota to allow for participation in clinical audit and to cater to the training needs of the individual. Previous experience in transport medicine is desirable but not essential as the post entails full training in the transport of critically ill children.

Main duties of the job

CATS receives approximately 2000 referrals per year, of which around 1000 are transported, with 50-60% being invasively ventilated. These transports are performed by land (ambulance and rapid response unit vehicle) and air (fixed wing and helicopter).

The main role of the fellow is to manage all aspects of a transport to ensure a safe, efficient, and cohesive transfer from the referring centre to the accepting intensive care unit. This includes: giving advice at the initial referral call, coordinating the transport, stabilising the patient, and ensuring continuity of intensive care during the transfer. Full on the job training will be given, and all transports will be supervised throughout, either by an accompanying consultant, or by close telephone contact.

It is also expected that the fellows will take an interest in the organisational aspects of transport medicine, including audit, quality assurance projects, presentation at transport forums and research in subjects pertaining to transport medicine and paediatric intensive care.

A logbook of transports will be kept and reviewed by the trainee’s supervisor; issues arising from these transports will be discussed on a regular basis. At the completion of the service term, the fellow will receive a formal appraisal from their supervisor.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The full job description provides an overview of the key tasks and responsibilities of the role, and the person specification outlines the qualifications, skills, experience and knowledge required. For both documents please view the attachments.