Consultant in Acute Medicine | Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

Introduction to the Department:
The Acute Medical Unit is a 39-bedded assessment and short-stay Ward located on the ground floor of the hospital. Of the 39 beds, 11 are side rooms (including 4 negative pressure isolation rooms for infection control purposes).The care of patients on the Ward is divided between two acute medical teams each led by an acute medicine consultant, with each team caring for 15-16 patients.The development of our SDEC services has allowed for the prevention of avoidable admissions and management of patients along ambulatory / same day emergency care pathways. Acute medical patients are referred to SDEC along established pathways following emergency presentation to ED, or can be referred directly from GPs or NHS111 via our dedicated acute medicine Hot Phone. LAS directly conveys suitable patients to SDEC following the Trusted Assessor model.Patients also attend SDEC as part of early supported discharges from AMU and the medical take. SDEC operating hours are 8am-8pm 7 days a week. We are currently expanding our SDEC Team to accommodate increased demand.Admission avoidance and early discharge are further supported by our dedicated therapies team. Specialty in-reach is provided by medical specialties.MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
1. CLINICAL RESPONSIBILITIES
1.1 Participate in clinical governance activities including incident reporting and patient safety initiatives.
1.2 Provide senior clinical leadership and expert management for patients presenting with acute medical conditions.
1.3 Contribute to safe discharge planning in partnership with community and primary care services.
1.4 Promote early senior decision-making to support effective patient flow.
1.5 provide clinical supervision, training, and mentoring to resident medical staff and support their professional development.
1.6Show flexibility and undertake different appropriate clinical tasks at the request of the clinical manager, as the need arises.
1.7 To provide clinical supervision for specialist registrars
See full details on attached Job description.
The North Middlesex University Hospital, Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust is a medium-sized acute and community trust with over 525 beds and over 600 community staff, serving more than 600,000 people living across Enfield and Haringey and the surrounding areas, including Barnet and Waltham Forest.
In the year ending 31 March 2022, the Trust reported a turnover of £419.7m and employed almost 4,000 staff. Following the transfer of Enfield Community Services on 1st April 2023, this has increased as we have welcomed over 600 new staff including District Nurses, Community Matrons, Community Physiotherapists, Psychologists and many more across a wide range of adult and children’s community services in Enfield.
In January 2025 we joined the Royal Free group: it is an exciting time to join North Mid as we continue our journey to become an integrated care organisation to deliver high quality, seamless care in our local communities, with a focus on tackling health inequalities.
North Mid is part of North Central London integrated care system – consisting of the NHS and Local authority organisations in Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. As with other ICSs, we are working increasingly closely with partners and indeed many of our financial and performance objectives are measured at this system level. Whilst all organisations remain as standalone statutory bodies, we have an ICS infrastructure for making shared decisions and agreeing shared approaches.

An indicative job plan/timetable for this post with indicative Programmed Activities (PAs) is provided below, but this will normally be re-assessed after 3 months of appointment to ensure it meets the needs of the service.
For a whole-time 10 PA contract: the baseline split is:
· Direct Clinical Care: 8.0 PAs on average per week (Clinical activity, clinically related activity, predictable & unpredictable emergency work)
· Supporting Professional Activities: 1.5 core SPAs (CPD, audit, teaching & training) and 0.5 Quality and Service SPAs to be agreed with appointee (assumed to be educational supervision).
An additional 0.5 SPA is available to all Consultant Staff subject to review and agreement for quality and service roles which must be approved prospectively by the Clinical Director, or by the Medical Director for Trust-wide roles.
Job plans are reviewed annually, and applicants are encouraged to study the provisions of the Consultant Contract for England 2003 under which this post is offered.
Supporting Professional Activities (SPAs):
Delivery of the highest quality service possible is the main priority of this department. This means integrating evidence-based practice, research, audit, and other aspects of clinical governance, particularly the delivery of quality training and risk management. There are many areas for service development and requirements for working with all healthcare professionals and specialties.
There are a number of different shifts within the annualised acute medicine consultant rota: the following description covers the shifts duties, the average workload and the shift frequency.
· AMU A & B: 0800-1600 (1.75 DCC PAs + 0.25 SPA PAs/day): 8-10 am post-take round in ED then named consultant for half of AMU each (15-16 patients) (frequency: 65 shifts per year).
· SDEC: 0800-1700 (2.0 DCC PAs + 0.25 SPA PAs/day): named consultant for SDEC supporting ANPs and resident doctors, holding referral & advice hot phone (frequency: 33 shifts per year).
· PTWR & Day Take: 0800-1700 (2.25 DCC PAs): 8-10 am post-take round in ED then named consultant for the medical take. The average medical take is 50 patients/24h. (frequency: 33 shifts per year).
· Additional standalone SPA activity (up to 2 SPA PAs/day).
· Weekday Evening Take: 1700-2000 (0.83 DCC PAs) (frequency: 1 shift per month (on a fixed evening between Monday and Thursday), plus 1 in 14 Fridays).
· AMU weekend:
o Saturday 0800-2000 (4 DCC PAs) and Sunday 0800-1700 (3 DCC PAs) alternate with:
o Saturday 0800-1700 (3 DCC PAs) and Sunday 0800-2000 (4 DCC PAs).
o Post-take round in ED then responsible for half of AMU (15-16 patients), medical take in the afternoon until the end of the shift. AMU consultant supporting SDEC.
o 1.75 of SPA PAs for the rest of the week, on a day of own choice.
o Compensatory time off/zero hours is included following a weekend displacing normal clinical activity.
o (The weekend frequency is 1 in 8).
We have adopted annualised job plans and the exact timetable of shifts are allocated to take account of annual leave requests and other agreed specialty activities whilst maintaining cover in all clinical areas. There are opportunities to swap with colleagues where the need arises after the rota is written. The exact allocation of shifts on the rota also takes into account individual skills and preferences across the Consultants contributing to the Acute Medicine Rota, eg some consultants contributing to a higher proportion of SDEC or take shifts.
Dedicated time for DCC admin duties (reviewing results, attending MDT meetings, dictating letters, virtual clinics, etc) is included in the AMU and SDEC shifts (0.25 PA per shift).
On Call Duties
There is evening and weekend scheduled working as per above shifts description.
This post does not currently include participation in the overnight or weekend out of hours on-call rota, therefore no on-call supplement applies.

This advert closes on Sunday 20 Jul 2025 #J-18808-Ljbffr