Occupational Therapist for Medicine (+Neurology) in Harlow

Main duties of the job include:

• Providing individual and client centred assessments to medicine & neurology, managing the most complex cases addressing occupational performance skills, patterns, context or contexts and activity demands in collaboration with patients and carers.
• Undertaking occupational therapy specialist multi-needs assessments using complex and advanced clinical reasoning, demonstrating critical thinking, reflection and analysis to develop individual and group goal and task oriented treatment plans.
• Acting as a source of clinical expertise and advice, providing clinical leadership within the medical team and serving as a resource for other teams regarding neurology.
• Developing collaborative treatment plans with patients, carers and colleagues in the hospital and, if necessary, in the patient’s home environment, demonstrating ethical clinical reasoning and problem solving techniques to determine agreed outcomes across health and social care.
• Maintaining high professional standards, continuously promoting and developing quality improvements appropriate to the needs of the occupational therapy service and profession.
• Being responsible for clinical and managerial caseload management, ensuring clinical governance, quality assurance and occupational therapy professional standards are met.
• Undertaking complex risk assessments and advising others in determining appropriate management specifically relating to moving and handling, safe use of equipment, pre-discharge access assessments and home assessments, ensuring safety during occupational therapy interventions both in hospital and the patient’s home.
• Understanding and applying National Guidelines and legislation relating to health and social care in occupational therapy practice.
• Taking a lead in developing and implementing clinical training programmes and in-service training for occupational therapy staff and other professionals.
• Being professionally and legally responsible and accountable for all aspects of work, ensuring a high standard of care for patients and supporting more junior staff to do likewise.
• Operationally leading and managing designated occupational therapy staff within the medical team, providing effective guidance, supervision and performance management including the education and management of students on practice placements.
• Informing the occupational therapy service of changes in clinical practice which may influence occupational therapy service delivery, business planning and strategic reviews to support the delivery of the annual occupational therapy plan, meeting agreed objectives.
• Ensuring accurate and up to date records of all professional judgements, decisions taken, and related statistical information are kept and reported in accordance with occupational therapy policies.
• Participating as required in the recruitment selection and induction of junior occupational therapy staff.
• Participating in the operational planning and implementation of policy and service development within occupational therapy, medicine & neurology, leading on delegated projects.

For further information, please see the attached job description and personal specification of the role. Alternatively, you are welcome to call the therapies department on 01279 827199 and speak with Katie Silk (head of therapies) or Darryl De Souza (deputy therapy manager) for an informal chat.