Consultant Neonatologist | The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust

Applications are invited for a substantive 10PA, non-resident consultant post. The post will be based at Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals, a designated level 3 neonatal intensive care in the West Midlands Operational Delivery Network. The applicant will be on the specialist register or within 6 months of CCT with subspecialty in neonatology. They will join a team of 9 consultants and participate in a full range of roles within the department including:

• Intensive care and special care hot weeks
• Resident (5-10pm) and non-resident (10pm-9am) on call rota
• Outpatient follow up clinics, antenatal counselling and bereavement clinics
• Opportunity to provide/develop echocardiography

The post will suit a CCT candidate looking to develop their skills and experience at consultant level. In conjunction with Consultant and Senior colleagues, the responsibilities include:

• Providing a service in Neonatal
• Participating in the out-of-hours On-Call service for the department
• Providing cover for Consultant and senior colleagues during periods of leave
• Engaging in medical audit, quality improvement and research as appropriate
• Ensuring that clinical governance requirements are met
• Maintaining adequate arrangements for hospital staff involved in patient care

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS trusts in the West Midlands providing primary, acute and community services. The Trust is committed to creating flexible working arrangements that suit your needs and will consider all requests from applicants who wish to work flexibly.

The Unit has facilities to provide NICU care for Wolverhampton and surrounding Black Country hospitals. A daily neonatal and maternity video huddle facilitates the timely transfer of extreme preterm infants ideally in utero to New Cross. The neonatal unit is equipped with:

• High frequency oscillation and nitric oxide
• Therapeutic hypothermia for up to 2 babies at a time

General and specialised neonatal surgery, when required, is undertaken at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. There is good liaison with all departments at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and KIDS/NTS teams. The neonatal unit continues to provide initial care for infants with congenital heart disease and for surgical cases such as Gastroschisis and Oesophageal Atresia.

There is close collaboration with the Obstetric Team at New Cross Hospital, including in perinatal mortality, risk management, maternity and neonatal forums, intrapartum committee meetings and fetal multidisciplinary meetings. The Unit is staffed and equipped to standards required for Level 3 intensive care, as recommended by the Clinical Standards Advisory Group for Neonatal Intensive Care.

This unit uses a full Badger electronic patient recording system to capture all patient data and is paperless. Weekly ward rounds are undertaken with Consultant Microbiologists who offer support and guidance on management. There are weekly Nutrition ward rounds. Investigations are analysed in the main laboratories which are equipped to deal with small volume samples. Standardised TPN is available in line with BAPM recommendations.

Neonatal transfers are carried out by the Newborn Transport Service and KIDS retrieval team. There are twice weekly cranial ultrasound sessions by trained ultrasonographers using the Unit's own machine. Depending on clinical need, cranial ultrasound scans could be obtained on any weekday. The team also undertakes renal ultrasound scanning for antenatally detected renal pelvic dilatation.

There is a weekly echocardiography clinic for babies with suspected congenital heart disease. Acute echocardiography is performed by our team of 5 consultant neonatologists with additional expertise. A hip ultrasound scanning service is supervised by two paediatric orthopaedic surgeons who have clinical duties at New Cross & Birmingham Children’s Hospital. Retinopathy screening is carried out on site by a Consultant Ophthalmologist based at New Cross.

Short term and illness-based follow up is offered by the neonatal consultants, as well as developmental follow up until 2 years. Babies discharged from NNU who need admission to the paediatric ward will be managed by the on-take paediatric consultant, but the overall Consultant responsibility will be borne by the baby’s neonatal consultant.

We have dedicated full-time in-house neonatal physiotherapists, Speech and Language, Psychology, Dietetics and Pharmacy. An Occupational therapist is awaiting appointment. Bereavement service is delivered by 2 bereavement nurses.

We currently collect neonatal data on the Badgernet neonatal database, and utilise NIPE SMART (for New-born Infant Physical Examination). The Badger data provides information for clinical purposes, audit, benchmarking of services, activity data for Specialised Service Commissioners & NNAP project. There are excellent opportunities for linked research with obstetrics and the community paediatricians on epidemiology and follow up of preterm babies.

The NNU is benchmarked against international standards via Vermont-Oxford Network. The maternity department is also now using a fully electronic patient record; Badgernet maternity system. Research involvement with national studies is supported by a dedicated research team. Consultants are encouraged to be involved in research and develop their skills in this area.

Teaching and Education is central to the service. Over recent years we have developed a dedicated neonatal teaching schedule with 3 sessions per week of consultant supported teaching as well as 1 session per week of skills teaching provided by our Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioners. This aims to complement the regional teaching sessions provided to trainees and the network education sessions for nurses.

Weekly meetings include:

• NNU Consultant Business Meeting
• Departmental Clinical Meeting/Journal club
• Local Neonatal Teaching

Monthly meetings include:

• NNU ward meeting
• Neonatal Mortality Review Meeting
• Acute services Risk Management Meeting
• Maternity Services Liaison Committee meeting
• PMRT meeting
• Fetal Medicine Meetings
• Intrapartum Care Meeting
• Obstetric Risk Management Meeting
• Cranial ultrasound review meetings
• Echocardiography peer review
• Joint Perinatal Forum
• Directorate management meeting
• WMNODN (West Midlands Neonatal Operational delivery Network) meetings

The post holder is expected to contribute and represent New Cross Hospital at such meetings, or alternatively to provide unit cover enabling other critical team members to participate in Network meetings.