Lead GP in Urgent Access Primary Care (UAPC) Service in Hereford

Our Lead GP provides senior clinical leadership for the Urgent Access Primary Care (UAPC) service, ensuring safe, effective, high quality, patient centred urgent care. This hands-on role combines clinical support, governance, service development, and system-wide collaboration to maintain high standards in a fast-paced environment. The postholder is a visible senior clinician, offering expert advice and oversight for complex, high risk and time critical cases, including CMDU pathways where commissioned. They support safe decision making, patient flow, risk management, and consistent application of pathways and governance. Working closely with multidisciplinary teams, the Lead GP promotes collaborative practice, clinical excellence, workforce development, and continuous quality improvement. They provide supervision, mentorship, and leadership while fostering a culture of learning, openness, and patient safety. The role also contributes to service design, workforce planning, and integration across primary, urgent, community and emergency care to ensure seamless patient care and effective use of resources.

Main duties of the job

• Provide senior clinical leadership and oversight across the UAPC service, ensuring safe, effective, and patient-centred care.
• Act as an accessible senior clinician, offering real-time support and guidance for complex, high-risk and time-critical clinical presentations.
• Support clinical decision-making, patient flow, triage, admission avoidance and appropriate use of urgent care pathways.
• Promote high standards of patient safety, prescribing practice, infection prevention and control, and clinical risk management.
• Provide clinical supervision, mentorship and professional support to multidisciplinary colleagues, supporting workforce development and continuous learning.
• Contribute to service development, workforce planning and the ongoing improvement of UAPC pathways and models of care.
• Work closely with operational and clinical leaders to deliver quality performance and contractual objectives.
• Support effective integration and partnership working with general practice, community services, ambulance services, emergency departments and other healthcare providers.
• Maintain accurate clinical documentation and promote adherence to organisational health, safety and wellbeing policies.
• Act as a role model for professional, ethical and evidence-based clinical practice, fostering a culture of openness, learning and continuous improvement.

About us

Taurus Healthcare was established in 2012 as the provider arm of the GP Federation serving 185,000 patients in Herefordshire. Founded and owned by partners across the Herefordshire Primary Care community, Taurus focuses on delivering excellent out of hospital services. Our ethos is to provide high quality, cost effective care as close to home as possible, while ensuring patients who need hospital services are seen quickly and effectively. We strive to create a diverse, inclusive workplace and welcome applications from all backgrounds, including Military Veterans and family members of serving personnel. This role is not available for visa sponsorship and applicants must already have the right to work in the UK.

Employee benefits include:

• NHS pension scheme with 23.78% employer contribution.
• 33-38 days annual leave including bank holidays (pro rata).
• Access to our Employee Benefits Programme (Vivup), offering:
• 24/7 counselling
• Salary sacrifice schemes for cars and bikes
• Discounts from national retailers
• Access to the Blue Light discount scheme

Job responsibilities

• Clinical Leadership & Oversight
• Provide senior clinical leadership across the UAPC service, setting and maintaining clinical standards and models of care.
• Act as a visible, accessible senior clinician within the service, providing leadership during live service delivery.
• Enable safe, consistent decision making across shifts, roles and care settings.
• Ensure services operate in line with national guidance, GMC standards, contractual requirements and organisational policies.
• Senior Clinical Support and Decision Making
• Provide senior clinical advice and support to clinicians during shifts, particularly where presentations are complex, high risk or uncertain.
• Support decision making where escalation, admission or alternative pathways are being considered.
• Offer senior input on safeguarding concerns, end of life care, capacity and consent matters.
• Promote confident, thoughtful risk management and avoid unnecessary escalation where safe to do so.
• Oversight of Clinical Pathways and Patient Flow
• Ensure senior clinical triage is applied consistently across the urgent care pathway.
• Support appropriate streaming of patients to the right clinician and setting.
• Oversee safe use of the Consult and Complete approach.
• Ensure adherence to agreed pathways, SOPs and escalation frameworks to maintain equity and quality of care.
• Clinical Governance and Patient Safety
• Lead and participate in clinical governance processes, including:
• Incident and near-miss review
• Audit and quality assurance activity
• Learning from complaints and significant events
• Monitor prescribing practice, infection prevention and control, and referral appropriateness.
• Ensure learning is shared and embedded across the service.
• Foster a just and open culture where staff feel supported to raise concerns and learn from experience.
• Multidisciplinary Team Working
• Chair and lead MDT discussions, clinical huddles and case reviews as required.
• Promote collaborative, person-centred working across GPs, ACPs/ANPs, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and operational teams.
• Support professional development, reflective practice and shared learning within the UAPC workforce.
• Education, Supervision and Workforce Development
• Provide clinical supervision and leadership support to clinicians working in UAPC.
• Contribute to induction, training and ongoing competency development.
• Identify learning needs and themes arising from day-to-day clinical practice.
• Promote continual professional development (CPD) and quality improvement activity.
• Service Development and System Integration
• Contribute to service design, workforce planning and ongoing development of the UAPC model.
• Work closely with the Senior Service Manager and Associate Medical Director to deliver performance, quality and contractual objectives.
• Support integration with in-hours general practice and the wider urgent and emergency care system, including ED, ambulance services, community teams and single points of access.
• Ensure high quality handover and continuity of care across services.
• Safeguarding and Legal Responsibilities
• Fulfil safeguarding responsibilities for children and adults in line with statutory guidance and organisational policy.
• Ensure compliance with the Mental Capacity Act, consent and information governance requirements.
• Act as a senior role model for safe, ethical and lawful clinical practice.

Person Specification

• Personal Qualities and Attributes
• Demonstrates a high level of integrity
• Ability to use own initiative, follow tasks through and work with a high level of autonomy
• Be responsive and agile, adapting to a rapidly changing environment
• Ability to work within a team
• Skills
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex clinical information clearly and confidently
• Strong interpersonal skills, able to build constructive relationships across clinical and operational teams
• High level analytical and clinical problem solving skills, particularly in time pressured environments
• Ability to provide senior clinical advice, challenge constructively and support decision making
• Ability to manage, prioritise and balance competing clinical and leadership demands
• High levels of accuracy, attention to detail and professional diligence
• Negotiation and influencing skills across organisational and system boundaries
• Qualifications
• Fully qualified General Practitioner with CCT (or equivalent)
• Full GMC registration with licence to practise
• Evidence of ongoing appraisal and revalidation
• Demonstrable commitment to continuing professional development (CPD)
• Additional training or qualifications relevant to urgent care, leadership or quality improvement
• Prescribing experience in time critical or complex clinical pathways (e.g. CMDU, frailty, urgent care)
• Experience
• Experience of delivering urgent, unscheduled, out of hours or acute primary care
• Experience of senior clinical decision making and managing clinical risk
• Experience of working effectively in a pressurised environment with competing priorities
• Leadership experience (formal or informal), including supporting other clinicians
• Strong understanding of multidisciplinary team (MDT) working
• Knowledge of clinical governance processes, including incident review and learning
• Experience using EMIS Web or equivalent primary care clinical systems
• Understanding of safeguarding responsibilities and legal frameworks (including MCA and consent)
• Experience of working within COVID Medicines Delivery Services (CMDU) or other time critical treatment pathways
• Understanding of local urgent care systems, including ED, ambulance services, community teams and in-hours GP services
• Experience of working within Herefordshire and Worcestershire health systems
• Disclosure and Barring Service Check
• 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.

£96,542 to £116,699 a year

£96,542 FTE PA (In Hours)

£116,699 FTE PA (Out of Hours)