Palliative Medicine Consultant

About the Role

We are 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 John’s Hospice, and have 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 John’s Hospice. The post-holder will provide leadership, support and supervision for the medical team at St John’s Hospice.

St John’s Hospice provides a wide range of specialist palliative care and lymphoedema services to patients and families residing in North and West London ICB. The Hospice comprises a 17 bedded Inpatient unit, Wellbeing Centre, Community Specialist Palliative Care service, Hospice@Home service, Lymphoedema service and Social Work and Bereavement service. In total, the hospice supports approximately 1,500 direct beneficiaries each year and when support to friend and family members is included, the hospice reaches over 4,000 patients and family members each year.

Key Responsibilities

• Work as part of a team of consultants, providing specialist palliative care to patients predominantly in the hospice inpatient unit and outpatients. The post will also require occasional palliative care reviews of hospital patients, in addition to cross-covering the community and the wellbeing centre to ensure adequate clinical cover for the service is maintained when colleagues are on leave.
• Take responsibility for patients under his/her care and will undertake clinical duties associated with care of patients and the running of the clinical departments.
• Work collaboratively with all other team members and provide clinical support to the wider multi-disciplinary team.
• Attend the weekly inpatient unit MDT meeting and take responsibility for decisions about patients.
• Agree and arrange safe admissions and discharges of patients to and from the Hospice in line with local policy.
• Ensure that comprehensive plans are made and recorded for each in-patient prior to the weekend in both their clinical record and the handover sheet.
• Ensure comprehensive handover of clinical information to consultants covering out of hours, ensuring seamless continuity of care.
• Participate in a non-resident telephone on-call service providing advice to St John’s Hospice in-patient and community services and supporting the in-patient telephone advice line. On-call duties are shared between the three Consultants and are also supported through an external provider as a consultant telephone on call rota.
• The post holder is required to be fully registered with the GMC with a licence to practice and attain revalidation as necessary.
• To participate in regular appraisals, job planning and job performance review and meet all the requirements for revalidation.
• To identify own educational and developmental needs through performance appraisal and development review (PADR); actively participating in the process with their line manager.
• Act 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, ensuring a multi-disciplinary approach to palliative care.
• Undergraduate teaching to visiting medical students.
• Education and teaching for doctors in training and professionals visiting the unit.
• Participate in teaching programmes for multi-professional teams within and outside the hospice.