Palliative Medicine Consultant in City of Westminster

The Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth is looking for an experienced Palliative Medicine Consultant to join our team. The post-holder will be the consultant based in the Inpatient unit and outpatient services at St Johns Hospice, with clinical responsibility for patients accepted by these services, as well as providing cover for the Consultant in Palliative Medicine responsible for the Community Specialist Palliative Care Team and Wellbeing Centre at St Johns Hospice.

Main duties of the job include:

• Providing specialist palliative care to patients predominantly in the hospice inpatient unit and outpatients.
• Occasional palliative care reviews of hospital patients.
• Cross-covering the community and the wellbeing centre to ensure adequate clinical cover for the service is maintained when colleagues are on leave.
• Taking responsibility for patients under your care and undertaking clinical duties associated with the care of patients and the running of the clinical departments.
• Working collaboratively with all other team members and providing clinical support to the wider multi-disciplinary team.
• Attending the weekly inpatient unit MDT meeting and taking responsibility for decisions about patients.
• Agreeing and arranging safe admissions and discharges of patients to and from the Hospice in line with local policy.
• Ensuring comprehensive plans are made and recorded for each in-patient prior to the weekend in both the clinical record and the handover sheet.
• Ensuring comprehensive handover of clinical information to consultants covering out of hours, ensuring seamless continuity of care.
• Participating in a non-resident telephone on-call service providing advice to St Johns Hospice in-patient and community services and supporting the in-patient telephone advice line.

The post holder is required to be fully registered with the GMC with a licence to practice and attain revalidation as necessary. Responsibilities also include:

• Participating in regular appraisals, job planning and job performance review.
• Identifying own educational and developmental needs through performance appraisal and development review (PADR).
• Acting as a key member of the Senior Management Team, liaising with the Medical Director and Assistant Director of Nursing for the Hospice, Consultants in Palliative Medicine, Hospice Heads of Departments and other staff members.
• Undergraduate teaching to visiting medical students.
• Education and teaching for doctors in training and professionals visiting the unit.
• Participating in teaching programmes for multi-professional teams within and outside the hospice.

Person Specification:

• Evidence of critical thinking.
• Evidence of ability to apply evidence to practice.
• Evidence of under and/or post graduate teaching.
• Evidence of audit projects completed.
• Evidence of good personal organisation.
• Evidence of effective interpersonal and communication skills (especially around sensitive and complex situations).
• Evidence of working within and leading a multidisciplinary team.
• Resilient and able to meet the demands of the post, able to take on unscheduled tasks and work competently and effectively under pressure.
• Flexible approach with ability to adapt to changing or conflicting priorities.
• Awareness and understanding of specialist palliative medicine in the voluntary sector and ability to work across organisations.
• The authority and decision-making skills needed to lead a multidisciplinary team in a complex environment.

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 to check for any previous criminal convictions.