Palliative Care Consultant

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust are seeking to appoint a permanent Consultant in Palliative Medicine to join the existing team of nine Consultants. The post-holder will be employed by Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. The post will be of 10 sessions (2 of which are Education), plus on call with 2% on-call supplement.

All Consultants work as part of a multi-disciplinary team. The exact makeup of the team varies according to setting and includes (but is not limited to) Clinical Nurse Specialists, other palliative care Nurses, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Social Workers, Technical Instructors, Chaplains, Pharmacists, Junior Doctors.

Northumbria Palliative Care services are responsible for delivering Consultant services to 6 hubs: North Tyneside, Wansbeck, NSECH, Central/South Northumberland, West Northumberland and North Northumberland. This is provided across community, hospital and palliative care inpatient services. The team provides cover for service gaps- holiday, sickness, maternity or vacancies.

We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, in addition to our state-of-the-art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. We also care for people in their homes and provide services from facilities in local communities such as health centres. We give people greater choice and control over their care to help them to live independently at home and avoid hospital admission where appropriate.High quality patient care is at the heart of everything we do and we strive to ensure every single patient and service user has an exceptional experience with us. We have one of the most extensive patient experience programmes of any trust in England.

Individual Consultants have 2 main sites of operation but all Consultants may have to work on any site as circumstances dictate, and to encourage consistency of care across the Trust. Individual Consultants provide an integrated service across community, inpatient and hospital settings depending on the exact number of sessions in their job plan for the Northumbria component.

The successful candidate will join a team of nine existing Consultants at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust. At Consultant level, the team is close and committed to supporting each other. Individuals are encouraged to develop themselves, and take on leadership roles within the Trust, region and nationally. The existing Consultants have been involved in national initiatives through the Association for Palliative Medicine, NICE and the Department of Health, as well as roles within the Trust and region. The Palliative Care Service is part of the Northern region Specialty Training programme for palliative medicine, Core Medical Training, GP Vocational Training Scheme and Foundation programme. There is a significant contribution to undergraduate and postgraduate education.

There are regular palliative care business meetings and Consultant meetings. The Consultants host the Northern Regional Palliative Care Physicians’ Group once a year and attend as well as contributing to senior clinical leadership within the Trust.