Senior Clinical Engineer in Nottingham

The post holder will provide comprehensive medical device maintenance, repair, commissioning and management services to a wide range of clinical specialties. Assist in the whole life management and support of all medical devices across Northampton General Hospital.

Other responsibilities include:

• Providing support services to one or more specialist areas e.g. Critical Care, Theatres, Radiotherapy, Diagnostic imaging, Special Care Baby Unit, Renal, etc.
• Train and advise nursing and other staff in the safe use of medical devices.
• Organise and update service, operation and instruction procedures.
• May supervise other technicians.
• Provide effective input into the work of the Trust, to support the achievement of our vision and values.

Main duties of the job:

• Perform a wide range of technical duties, mainly guided by procedures involving autonomous work on highly complex medical equipment in the clinical and workshop environment to ensure the optimum effectiveness, reliability, availability and safety of medical devices.
• Investigate and test medical devices, analysing the results to diagnose faults or problems and rectify them.
• Communication of investigation results to users, colleagues and suppliers, sharing knowledge and experience.
• Using primarily computerised systems, make accurate equipment maintenance history records and other information supporting audit, quality and performance monitoring.
• Supervising other technicians when required, to ensure all aspects of the service are delivered in an efficient, safe, professional and organised way according to departmental policies, procedures and Health and Safety documentation.
• Liaise with medical device suppliers to obtain technical and commercial information in relation to equipment maintenance and evaluation.
• First line support of instrumentation interfaces to specialist clinical computer systems, liaising with IM&T to resolve problems as necessary.
• Monitor stocks and initiate orders.
• Comment on, and propose changes to, departmental procedures and develop planned maintenance schedules.
• Complete and review equipment and job audits.
• Contribute to organised training of technical, medical, nursing staff and patients in the proper care and use of medical devices.

About us:

University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) brings together Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust. As a group, we are committed to improving services for our communities through collaboration, modernising care delivery and striving for excellence. Working together enables us to share expertise, strengthen services and create greater opportunities, and there may be a requirement to work across sites depending on service needs.

Our Excellence Values are Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Integrity and Courage. UHN welcomes applications from all backgrounds and is committed to an inclusive working environment. We are proud signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant and hold the Gold Award under the Employer Recognition Scheme. Candidates who identify as members of the Armed Forces community and meet the essential criteria will be guaranteed an interview.

Job responsibilities:

• To play a pivotal role in ensuring governance excellence in the use, training, maintenance and support of medical devices. Analyse complex problems, situations and information, making informed judgments and formulating solutions and recommendations for the continual improvement of patient safety.
• Contribute to decisions/judgements involving situations where expertise in a field is required taking into account health & safety and conflicting demands.
• Conduct risk assessments involving safety issues relating to medical devices.
• Identify equipping deficiencies and ensure that they are fed into the equipment replacement program.

Communication:

• Communicate to individuals, medical device information which will include policy changes, new policies, guidelines and regulations.
• Communicate sometimes unwelcome information regarding clinical technical issues, policy and service delivery issues with staff, suppliers and outside agencies many of whom may have opposing views.
• Communications will be conducted in the form of email, telephone, attending meetings, one to one discussions, problem solving in complex situations.
• Provide input where appropriate in any discussions relating to equipment management.
• Communicate with suppliers and all external bodies as necessary.
• Communicate with internal and external auditors, the Health and Safety Executive. Communicate with any staff representatives as required.

Planning & Organisation:

• Plan, prioritise and organise a range of activities relevant to own remit.
• Provide support to the Head of Clinical Engineering in medical device management across the Trust.
• Utilise and analyse data from audits and provide suggestions that may lead to improvements in management of medical devices.
• Support and supervise junior colleagues or students on placement.

Policy, Protocol & Service Development:

• Contribute to medical device policies and procedures and support the implementation of any changes in these policies.
• Working within Medical Equipment Management Policy framework.
• Participate in other departmental policy development at senior departmental meetings.
• Contribute to the development of written procedures for all aspects of the work within the medical devices remit.
• Contribute and support procedures for actioning Central Alert System (CAS) relevant to medical devices.
• Responsible for ensuring that clinical staff are informed of and encouraged to adhere to Trust policies and procedures.

Responsibility for Research and Development:

• Contribute to the formal benchmarking audits programmes both internally and on other sites participating within the scheme.
• Support investigations arising from the Trusts Clinical and Adverse Incident reporting system (Datix). The post holder is required to find the root causes of medical equipment failure and report these findings as appropriate to each episode. Propose corrective action plan, to prevent reoccurrence.

Other responsibilities:

• Provide cover for colleagues as appropriate.
• Assist in producing ad hoc reports and in project work.
• Undertake any other duties requested, as appropriate to the banding.
• Maintain own Continuing Professional Development.
• Represent the Trust at appropriate external bodies.
• Maintain expertise in medical device use and safety issues.
• Is responsible for giving advice to users in all matters related to medical devices safety.
• Responsible for scheduling and prioritising own work within area of practice.

Person Specification:

• Qualifications: HNC/HND, B.Eng or BSc. in a physical science or electronic engineering subject or equivalent vocational qualification.
• A range of relevant technical training course, OEM or approved supplier.
• Contemporary knowledge of analogue and digital electronics and associated fault-finding techniques.
• Eligible for membership of an appropriate professional institute.

Knowledge & Experience:

• Post qualification technical experience in repair and maintenance of medical equipment at a band 5 or 6.
• Post qualification technical experience in repair and maintenance of specialist electronic medical equipment.
• Experience in scheduling and providing a maintenance and repair service for a wide range of medical equipment.
• Contemporary technical knowledge in application and use of electro medical equipment.
• Contemporary technical knowledge in the testing of patient connected equipment.
• Working knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology.
• Familiarity with Health & Safety at Work and other related legislation.
• Sound grasp of Medical Device management guidance.
• Work without supervision using own initiative.
• Fault finding on complex medical equipment.
• Experience of undertaking technical/clinical risk assessments on medical devices and have ability to find novel solutions to minimise risk where appropriate.

Skills & Abilities:

• Ability to integrate within a team of staff working with a wide range of medical devices.
• Technical & clinical knowledge in medical device technologies and able to investigate root causes of clinical incidents.
• Knowledge of statutory, regulatory and governance obligations relating to medical device management lifecycle.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills.
• Provide and receive complex, sensitive and contentious information, negotiate with stakeholders on difficult issues, and report on complex and/or sensitive information.
• Ability to organise own workload.
• Experience in operation and function of equipment and techniques in healthcare.
• Ability to travel between sites in a timely manner.
• Able to use standard office and bespoke software applications.
• Understanding of the principles of risk management and incident investigations and the use of Root Cause Analysis tools - with a high level of understanding of patient and staff safety risks that may arise from equipment failure.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

University Hospitals of Northamptonshire £39,959 to £48,117 a year Per Annum / Pro Rata Contract Permanent Working pattern Reference number 265-8297794-COR Job locations University Hospitals of Northamptonshire.