Medical Consultant

Job responsibilities

The successful applicant will be a part of the Hospice Medical and Pharmacy Team, which is led by the Medical Director.

The Hospice Medical Team provides specialist palliative medical care to patients on the Hospice Inpatient unit, in outpatients and during domiciliary visits. The Hospice Medical Team also provided medical advice and oversight to the Herts Community Trust Specialist Palliative Care CNS team.

The successful applicant will join the Hertfordshire Specialist Palliative Care Consultant on call rota, providing telephone on call cover to hospices, palliative community and hospital services across Hertfordshire.

Fitting with the Hospices strong ethos of supporting training and education, the Hospice has a training slot for a Specialty Trainee in Palliative Medicine and GP Trainees, with the successful applicant being one of the Hospice Clinical Supervisors.

The successful applicant will be provided with shared office space, a computer, internet access and secretarial support.

Garden House Hospice Care acknowledges the importance of mentoring, and the successful applicant will be supported to have a mentor if desired.

An applicant who is unable to undertake the duties of a whole-time post will receive equal consideration. If such an applicant is appointed, the job content will be modified appropriately to support less than full time working.

The successful applicant will be employed by Garden House Hospice Care, who is an equal opportunities employer.

Basic salary on commencement will be set at a threshold to reflect previous experience and will range from £105,504 to £139,882 for a full time appointment.

On call is paid at a rate of 3% of basic salary.

Standards

Essential

• Thorough knowledge and understanding of GMC standards in Good Medical Practice including:
• Good clinical care
• Maintaining good medical practice
• Good relationships and communication with patients
• Good working relationships with colleagues
• Good teaching and training
• Professional behaviour and probity
• Delivery of good clinical care
• Training and expertise in adult and childrens safeguarding.

Personal Skills

Essential

• Ability to take managerial responsibility and demonstrate leadership when appropriate
• Able to support the Hospice values in day to day clinical work and when engaging the wider community
• Ability to develop effective working relationships on an individual and multi-disciplinary basis with all levels of staff; an awareness of own limitations and when to ask for help; receptive to appropriate challenge
• Able to cope with and effectively organise the workload of a consultant
• Ability to cope with work pressure, be adaptable and flexible to change and new demands
• Have familiarity with standard office packages and use of IT based technology
• Ability and drive to use information and experience to improve the clinical service; ability to adapt and respond to changing circumstances to improve patient care
• Self-awareness and ability to accept and learn from feedback
• Commitment to maintaining professional skills and knowledge relevant to the job
• Promotes equality and values diversity.

Desirable

• Formal management training

Experience

Essential

• Comprehensive clinical experience in Palliative Medicine in hospital, community and Hospice settings
• Ability to take full and independent responsibility for clinical care of patients in all settings
• Displays sound clinical judgement & exercises sound clinical risk management
• High level of communication skills with an empathetic, caring approach to patients and families
• Formulate evidence based, individualised patient management plans for patients
• Understand the disease trajectories in life limiting conditions of both cancer and non-cancer aetiologies to enable appropriate clinical management decisions to be made
• Ability to make complex ethical decisions including withdrawal and withholding of treatments
• Basic life support skills

Desirable

• Attendance at Advanced Communication Skills course or communications skills qualification

Qualifications

Essential

• Full GMC registration with licence to practice
• MRCP or MRCGP
• Entry on the GMC Specialist Register for Palliative Medicine via either:
• CCT in Palliative Medicine (Proposed CCT date must be within 6 months of the appointments committee)
• Certificate of Eligibility for Specialist Registration (CESR)
• European Community Rights.

Desirable

• MSc, MD, PhD or further higher qualification

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).