Consultant in Palliative Medicine

Job responsibilities

MAIN PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF THE JOB:

Consultants are expected to practice at an advanced level and are able to demonstrate the following:

An expert practice function: The Consultant must be able to deliver high quality care to patients, enable other practitioners to maintain professional expertise, and to be able to demonstrate a high degree of professional autonomy within their role of a specialist within palliative care.

The Consultant will develop or maintain an area of specialist interest and support the Medical Director and the wider executive team with the realisation of the Pilgrims Hospices clinical strategy.

This includes the development of clinical policies, standard operating procedures and guidelines; collaboration with relevant external stakeholders and specialists in that topic and the development and support of working parties and champions at the hospice.

Specialist interests might include non-malignant conditions and widening access to minority groups.

Education, training and development function: The Consultant will contribute to the training and education of others, establishing formal links with local education providers. They should also contribute to the development of an education plan for both internal and external staff to encourage learning and to support income generation.

Professional leadership and consultancy function: The Consultant should be able to demonstrate leadership skills which will support and motivate others, in order to continuously improve quality of care and standards of practice. They should be a source of expertise and knowledge for others in their specialist fields. Nurse Consultants will work aligned with the Medical Consultants and their job description will mirror each other except for areas where legal distinctions such as supervision of colleagues in training, prescribing of medication and similar, become relevant. The medical consultants are expected to act as clinical Supervisors for medical trainees and become Educational Supervisors for trainees of higher training grades (SpRs).

Practice, service development, research and evaluation: Consultants will contribute to development of professional practice, through the promotion of evidence based practice and audits of standards of care. They will support research within the hospice and evaluation of practice within their specialist fields.

Quality assurance: This role is multi-factorial and has the CQC five standards at its heart. That is to ensure a safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led patient centred service provision. The Medical Consultants, alongside the Nurse Consultants will lead on creating an environment where standards of care provision are outstanding across the clinical services working with all staff to support quality improvement programmes.

Expert Clinical Practice:

• To be professionally accountable for all work undertaken and to practice at an advanced level of professional autonomy in line with local/national policy and guidance
• To work as a Consultant using advanced clinical reasoning and diagnostic skills, prescribing, planning, and evaluating interventions for patients with complex presentations.
• To be an authoritative expert assessor/advisor on pain and symptom management , psychological /spiritual/ social /practical and ethical decisions at the end of life and to work in partnership with a range of health professionals to improve their skills in these areas.
• Develop and conduct skilled medical intervention with patients with palliative care needs, assessing and addressing issues such as quality of life, futility, prognosis, withdrawing and withholding treatment and end of life decision making within an ethical framework.
• To undertake complex and sensitive holistic care assessments and plan, implement and evaluate care utilising advanced communication skills.
• To improve access to medication through the support and implementation of independent Nurse prescribing.
• Demonstrate negotiation and diplomacy skills and partnership working across the multi-disciplinary team
• To be in collaboration with the multidisciplinary team, with regards to safe, effective, timely admissions and discharges of patients.
• To identify areas for improvement and development which will enhance the palliative care provision for patients and carers.
• To work with the other clinical leads within the hospice in undertaking service improvements as identified.
• To act as a resource locally and nationally on issues related to palliative care.
• Take an active role in continuing to embed the outcome data to provide safe, responsive and effective care to the people we see in the community.

Leadership:

• It is expected that the consultant will spend up to 60% of their time in direct patient contact using a combination of face to face, video and telephone consultations, supporting and clinically supervising the ACP team.
• 40% of the time will be spent in developing services in line with the hospices clinical strategy and education
• To provide expert clinical leadership alongside the Nurse Consultants across the organisation
• Working with other clinical leads to develop and implement the Hospices strategic clinical plan.
• Be involved in the hospice governance process, influencing service provision and standards within the Hospice and the locality.
• To identify areas for service improvement, working with stakeholders, including service users, and propose changes as they are needed.
• To project manage change to services, as required.
• Provide support to the clinical teams in their development and learning, driving change as needed.
• To provide consultancy to other stakeholders involved in specialist palliative care provision and be recognised in the locality for having expertise in the field.
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