Consultant in Hepatology

Here at East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust, our mission is to provide high-quality, compassionate care for our communities. Our vision to 2030 is to be trusted to provide consistently outstanding care and exemplary service.

Our values are:

• Include: We value the diversity and experience of our community colleagues and partners, creating relationships and climates that provide an opportunity to share, collaborate and grow together.
• Respect: We create a safe environment where we are curious of the lived experience of others, seek out best practice and are open to listening and hearing new ideas.
• Improve: We are committed to consistently delivering excellent services and continuously looking to improve through a creative workforce that feels empowered to act in service of our shared purpose.

Job overview: Please note that, subject to approval, financial incentives may be available, including reimbursement of visa and flight expenses up to £5,000, together with the Trust's standard relocation package of up to £8,000. This provides a potential total support package of up to £13,000.

We are delighted to advertise for a hepatologist to join the team at ENH. This post is an important part of our ongoing development of liver services. We are seeking a consultant with enthusiasm, commitment, and drive to work closely with colleagues throughout the organisation and within the community. Hepatology has become a key specialty within the Trust, and its acute inpatient care has improved patient outcomes. We work collaboratively with other medical and surgical specialties including nephrology and oncology to provide a comprehensive local liver service, with access to tertiary hepatology support through strong links with the Royal Free liver unit.

The successful candidate will join a service that prides itself in effective leadership, innovative thinking, and excellent teamwork. We strive to challenge our existing working practices and to constantly improve our service to deliver best practice guidance and to ensure that our patient outcomes are successful, and they feel valued during their visits to the Trust.

Main duties of the job:

The hepatology unit sits within the department of gastroenterology and hepatology. The hepatology clinical team comprises 2 consultants, 4 band 7 clinical nurse specialists and a band 4 Fibroscan technician. We have level II training accreditation, which brings with it a dedicated hepatology training registrar.

Inpatient hepatology is supported by a hepatology registrar, providing hepatology in-reach across the hospital, with particular focus in ED, AMU and ITU. This allows for hepatology support to be provided for the patient’s entire inpatient admission.

Outpatient hepatology includes general hepatology outpatient services in addition to specialist clinics such as viral hepatitis clinics, post-transplant clinics (with colleagues from the Royal Free), and ex-ward ‘hot’ clinics with a focus on registrar training. We have established CNS-led clinics for MASLD, stable cirrhosis and viral hepatitis. Fibroscan clinics operate at all three hospital sites.

Working for our organisation: At East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust, we are proud of the range of general and specialist services we provide and our 6,000 or so dedicated staff ensure our patients get the best care. Our ability to be flexible and innovative in the way in which we work and deliver our services to our catchment has never been more important than it is now.

We run the following hospitals: The Lister Hospital, Stevenage; New Queen Elizabeth II (New QEII), Welwyn Garden City; Hertford County, Hertford.

We have ambitious plans to become an outstanding, patient-led Trust where dedicated staff provide high-quality, compassionate care to our patients. We continue to undergo significant transformation and our staff and patients are at the heart of delivering this ambitious agenda. We are committed to a positive work-life balance for our employees. This means that any employee is entitled to seek to work flexible working patterns and we are committed to listen and consider all requests.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities: We have a substantive consultant hepatologist post available based at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage which comprises 10 programmed activities (PAs) including an on-call commitment to the emergency upper GI endoscopy rota (approx. 1 in 12) and inpatient ward cover (approx. 1 in 20). The post does not include a commitment to the general medical on-call rota.

Skills required include:

• Able to evidence engagement with clinical governance and the identification of errors and the learning from errors.
• Evidence engagement with appraisal and revalidation.
• Able to show situational awareness and application of good decision making.
• Ability to effectively teach clinical skills.
• Ability to critically appraise published evidence.

Qualifications/Training:

• Entry on GMC Specialist Register or, be within 6 months of receipt of Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) at time of interview or, provide GMC confirmed eligibility for entry on the Specialist Register / Full GMC registration with a licence to practice.
• College Membership (MRCP) or qualification of an equivalent level.
• Evidence of being up to date and fit to practice safely, and aware of own training needs.

Previous Experience:

• Broad range of experience in hepatology.
• Competence in diagnostic and therapeutic gastroscopy.
• Demonstrable experience in a Locum Consultant role.
• Experience of supervising undergraduates, doctors in training and other colleagues.
• Published papers and original work in peer-reviewed journals.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the basic principles of audit, evidence-based practice, and clinical quality improvement initiatives.
• Demonstrable experience and participation in research.

Knowledge:

• Demonstrate understanding of basic principles of audit, evidence-based practice and clinical quality improvement initiatives.
• Comprehensive knowledge and insight regarding all the domains within the GMC standards of Good Medical Practice.

We are committed to fair, transparent and ethical recruitment. We will never ask applicants to pay fees at any stage of the recruitment process. All vacancies are advertised on our Trust Careers webpage and NHS Jobs, with applications managed through TRAC. We will only contact applicants through our official recruitment channels and Trust contact details.

Committed to our Community: East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion for all job applicants, staff, patients and the wider community. We want to create a workforce which represents the communities we serve. We are on a journey to become a more inclusive organisation and we welcome applications from everyone regardless of their background.

In particular, we encourage applications from candidates with disabilities, and candidates from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds who are currently under-represented in various parts of our workforce. We understand the importance of balancing work and home life. We are committed to support flexible working for our staff wherever possible and all our employees are given the opportunity to discuss potential for flexible working.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and achieved our status in 2019. We will remove barriers that prospective candidates might face at any stage of our recruitment process. If you have a disability and would like the advert in an alternative format, or would like to talk about how we can adjust the interview process to best support you, please contact us.

We are also proud to support our UK armed forces by supporting Reservists, Cadet Instructors, Veterans and military spouses/partners into employment and offering supportive policies that value their contribution to the community and to our Trust. We are committed to being a carer-friendly environment, addressing the complex needs of families with caring responsibilities.

In partnership with Carers in Hertfordshire, all our working carers have access to support from recruitment. We are also a member of Carers UK, providing resources to make balancing work and caring easier.