Salaried GP - Maternity Cover

The post-holder will manage a caseload and deal with a wide range of health needs in a primary care setting, ensuring the highest standards of care for all registered and temporary patients.

Clinical responsibilities:

• Make themselves available to undertake a variety of duties, including surgery consultations, telephone consultations and queries, visiting patients at home, checking and signing repeat prescriptions and dealing with queries, paperwork and correspondence in a timely fashion.
• Make professional, autonomous decisions in relation to presenting problems, whether self-referred or referred from other health care workers within the organisation.
• Assess the health care needs of patients with undifferentiated and undiagnosed problems.
• Screen patients for disease risk factors and early signs of illness.
• Develop care plans for health in consultation with patients and in line with current practice disease management protocols.
• Provide counselling and health education.
• Admit patients to hospital and refer to other care providers as appropriate.
• Record clear and contemporaneous consultation notes to agreed standards.
• Collect data for audit purposes.
• Compile and issue computer-generated acute and repeat prescriptions (avoiding hand-written prescriptions whenever possible).
• Prescribe in accordance with the practice prescribing formulary (or generically) whenever this is clinically appropriate.
• Undertake all the normal duties and responsibilities associated with a GP working within primary care.

Other responsibilities within the organisation:

• Awareness of and compliance with all relevant practice policies/guidelines, e.g. prescribing, confidentiality, data protection, health and safety.
• A commitment to life-long learning and audit to ensure evidence-based best practice.
• Contribute to evaluation/audit and clinical standard setting within the organisation.
• Contribute to the development of computer-based patient records.
• Contribute to the summarising of patient records and read-coding patient data.
• Attend training and events organised by the practice or other agencies, where appropriate.

Confidentiality:

In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health and other matters. They do so in confidence and have the right to expect that staff will respect their privacy and act appropriately. In the performance of the duties outlined in this job description, the post-holder may have access to confidential information relating to patients and their carers, practice staff and other healthcare workers. All such information from any source is to be regarded as strictly confidential.

Health & safety:

• Follow health and safety and infection control procedures as defined in the practice health & safety policy, the practice health & safety manual, and the practice infection control policy and published procedures.
• Use personal security systems within the workplace according to practice guidelines.
• Be aware of national standards of infection control and cleanliness and regulatory / contractual / professional requirements, and good practice guidelines.
• Correct personal use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
• Manage the full range of infection control procedures in both routine and extraordinary circumstances (e.g. pandemic or individual infectious circumstances).
• Hand hygiene standards.
• Manage directly all incidents of accidental exposure.
• Actively observe current working practices across the practice in relation to infection control, cleanliness and related activities, ensuring that procedures are followed and weaknesses/training needs are identified.
• Identify the risks involved in work activities and undertake such activities in a way that manages those risks across clinical and patient process.
• Monitor practice facilities and equipment in relation to infection control.
• Safe management of sharps use, storage and disposal.
• Maintain own clean working environment.
• Using appropriate infection control procedures, maintaining work areas in a tidy, clean and sterile and safe way, free from hazards.
• Actively identify, report, and correct health and safety hazards and infection hazards immediately when recognised.
• Keep own work areas and general/patient areas generally clean, sterile, identifying issues and hazards/risks.
• Undertake periodic infection control training.
• Correct waste and instrument management, including handling, segregation, and container use.
• Maintenance of sterile environments.
• Demonstrate due regard for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

Equality and diversity:

The post-holder will support the equality, diversity and rights of patients, carers and colleagues, to include:

• Acting in a way that recognises the importance of peoples rights, interpreting them in a way that is consistent with practice procedures and policies, and current legislation.
• Respecting the privacy, dignity, needs and beliefs of patients, carers and colleagues.
• Behaving in a manner which is welcoming to and of the individual, is non-judgmental and respects their circumstances, feelings priorities and rights.

Personal/professional development:

In addition to maintaining continued education through attendance at any courses and/or study days necessary to ensure that professional development requirements are met, the post-holder will participate in any training programme implemented by the practice as part of this employment.

Quality:

The post-holder will strive to maintain quality within the practice, and will:

• Alert other team members to issues of quality and risk.
• Assess own performance and take accountability for own actions, either directly or under supervision.
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the team by reflecting on own and team activities and making suggestions on ways to improve and enhance the teams performance.
• Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patients needs.
• Effectively manage own time, workload and resources.

Communication:

The post-holder should recognize the importance of effective communication within the team and will strive to:

• Communicate effectively with other team members.
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers.
• Recognise peoples needs for alternative methods of communication and respond accordingly.

Contribution to the implementation of services:

The post-holder will:

• Apply practice policies, standards and guidance.
• Discuss with other members of the team how the policies, standards and guidelines will affect own work.
• Participate in audit where appropriate.