Paramedic in Stowmarket

You will provide high-quality, patient-centred clinical care across the practices of the Eye locality: Eye, Debenham, Mendlesham and Fressingfield. As one of a team of four paramedics working together across these sites, your work will be centred primarily on home visits, alongside supporting care home ward rounds, running minor illness clinics, and taking on other clinical work as needed. The purpose of the role is to extend the reach and capacity of general practice: assessing, diagnosing and treating patients who would otherwise add to GP workload, and freeing GP time for the patients who need it most.

You will work within defined clinical protocols and scope of practice, with support and guidance from GPs, but you will be expected to function as a confident, autonomous clinician in your day-to-day decision-making, particularly in the home visiting setting. All patients requiring a home visit are triaged and clinically assessed by a GP before allocation to you, so you will always be visiting with a clear clinical picture and rationale already established, and with a GP available to you throughout the day for advice or escalation.

You will need to demonstrate safe, sound clinical decision-making and strong assessment and diagnostic skills, and to prioritise and assess patient need appropriately, including making referrals for further investigation or care where necessary.

Main duties of the job

• Home Visits: Undertake home visits as your primary activity, attending patients who have been triaged and allocated to you by a GP, assessing and treating them in their place of residence across a wide range of urgent, same-day and chronic-disease-related needs. Act as an autonomous clinician in the home setting, using sound clinical judgement and escalating to a GP where a case falls outside your scope of practice. Prioritise and sequence home visits sensibly across the day, taking account of clinical urgency and geography across the four practices.
• Care Home Support: Support care home ward rounds, working alongside GPs and care home staff to review and manage the needs of care home residents. Identify and proactively manage patients at risk of deterioration or hospital admission, in line with locally agreed pathways.
• Minor Illness Clinics: Run minor illness clinics, providing assessment, diagnosis and treatment at first point of contact for patients presenting with minor and same-day illness. Diagnose and manage acute and chronic conditions, combining drug and non-drug treatment approaches into a coherent management plan.

Wider Clinical Duties:

• Take on ad hoc clinical work across the four practices as needed, in agreement with your line manager and the GPs you support.
• Recognise, assess and refer patients presenting with mental health needs.
• Undertake telephone triage as appropriate to support clinics, home visits and access to GPs.
• Evaluate clinical information from examination and history-taking, and initiate appropriate treatment, referral, or hospital admission where required.
• Signpost patients to other services within locally agreed healthcare pathways.
• Maintain accurate, systematic documentation of all patient contacts and clinical care provided, including adverse events.
• Advise and support patients on healthy lifestyles, health promotion and disease prevention.
• Provide clinical advice to other members of the team where appropriate.
• Support GPs with other clinical duties as required, for example assisting with ECGs or other nursing tasks where a nurse is not available.

Responsibilities underpinning the role:

• Build and maintain good working relationships across all four practices and with the wider community team and aligned care homes.
• Plan and organise your workload in coordination with the wider paramedic team, and support colleagues, patients and carers.
• Contribute to how the team organises and coordinates its work across the four practices and be open to taking on wider coordination responsibilities within the team as it develops.
• Enrol in, undertake and qualify from the FCP/Advanced Practice roadmap to practice.
• Attend meetings relevant to your role, as agreed with your line manager.
• Undertake any other duties commensurate with your grade, as agreed with your line manager.

Professional Input:

• To and extract information from clinical IT systems.
• Work collaboratively with other members of the healthcare team, including care home staff, the ambulance service and secondary care.
• Help maintain the wellbeing of patients and staff in accordance with practice and Suffolk Primary Care policies.
• Undertake clinical audits in line with the organisation's clinical audit plan and participate in equipment testing and research as required.
• Contribute to the analysis of information to inform future development of the service.
• Participate and contribute to clinical meetings.
• Identify risks to service provision and raise them with the Clinical Lead.
• Work within the requirements of data protection legislation as it applies to patient records.
• Adhere to the HCPC Code of Professional Conduct and practise at all times within your scope of professional practice.
• Maintain current professional registration and indemnity.

Person Specification:

• Qualifications: Registered Paramedic with current HCPC registration. Minimum of three years' post-registration experience, with demonstrable experience of using diagnostic skills. Working towards, or already meeting, level 7 capabilities and the clinical pillar competencies of the Advanced Clinical Practice Framework.
• Experience: Essential experience of dealing with vulnerable patients. Desirable evidence of working in a community or primary care setting, including home visiting. Experience teaching or supporting junior staff or students.

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. Applicants must have current UK professional registration.