Job summary
Employer heading
Advanced Practitioner in Geriatric Medicine
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Job overview
Within the Healthcare of the Elderly (HCE) service line, our Acute Frailty Unit provides ambulatory care to frail older patients in crisis. A multidisciplinary team delivers urgent Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) within a designated assessment area along with excellent access to diagnostics and specialty liaison. £3.7 million of funding has been secured to comprehensively develop existing same day emergency care services as part of a wider investment into Acute Medicine, alongside a state of the art new hospital wing underway to house all urgent care services in the same footprint. This will mean streamlined pathways for our frail older patients centred around a purpose designed assessment area and future short stay unit. The post holder will contribute to the provision of seven day, twelve hour services for patients with frailty, working across the whole footprint of urgent and emergency care to ensure access to urgent CGA for all patients with frailty regardless of location.
***Please note that applications from temporary workers who have been engaged with the Trust for a minimum of 3 months are welcome.***
Main duties of the job
The successful applicant will demonstrate core capabilities in the following four domains as laid out in the NHSE Skills for Health ‘Frailty Framework for Core Competencies’:
A Understanding, identifying and assessing frailty
Clinical Frailty Scale; comprehensive geriatric assessment.
B Person-centred collaborative working
Person-centred approach; communication; families and carers as partners in care; collaborative and integrated working.
C Managing frailty
Preventing and reducing the risk of frailty; living well with frailty; promoting independence and community skills; physical and mental health and wellbeing; managing medication; care and support planning.
D Underpinning principles
Law, ethics and safeguarding; research and evidence-based practice; leadership in transforming services.
Future workforce plans will expand the number of AP roles working across the HCE service line; the post will include an element of cross cover for future AP colleagues working in other HCE areas.
Working for our organisation
We are a people business – where every member of staff matters and can make a difference. Patients are at the heart of everything we do. Joining University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust means becoming part of a team of dedicated staff, who are committed to leading the way through innovation, clinical excellence and great customer care. The Trust has great opportunities for career development in a highly progressive working environment. We offer all of this in a vibrant, modern city with a historic reputation for adventure. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL COMMUNICATION WILL BE ELECTRONIC, PLEASE CHECK YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT REGULARLY. If you have any issues with applying online and need additional support including reasonable adjustments with the application process please contact the recruitment team on 01752 432100. We recognise that work life balance is important for our colleagues and so we invite requests from applicants around less than full time/flexible working for our advertised roles. Please contact the recruiting manager to discuss this prior to your application submission. We commit to giving this full consideration in each case. We encourage people from diverse backgrounds to apply for our roles, as diversity strengthens our teams. It is sometimes necessary to close vacancies before the closing date. If you have not heard from us within 4 weeks of the closing date, please assume that you have not been shortlisted.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Clinical Practice
- Assess, differentially diagnose, plan, implement and evaluate individual treatment interventions for patients by virtue of expert clinical judgement and close liaison with members of the MDT.
- Use expertise and decision-making skills to inform clinical reasoning approaches when dealing with differentiated and undifferentiated individual presentations and complex situations, synthesising information from multiple sources to make appropriate, evidence-based judgements and/or diagnoses.
- Initiate, evaluate and modify a range of interventions which may include prescribing medicines, therapies, life style advice, and care.
- Exercise professional judgement to manage risk appropriately, especially where there may be complex and unpredictable events and supporting teams to do likewise to ensure safety of individuals, families and carers.
- Utilise complex decision-making skills to promote high quality care in unpredictable and challenging circumstances.
- Ensure compliance with their respective code of professional conduct and work within their scope of practice.
- Works in conjunction with the MDT to clearly define values, direction and policies impacting upon care.
- Work in partnership with individuals, families and carers, using a range of assessment methods as appropriate
- Be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of their broadened level of responsibility and autonomy. This includes being critically aware of their limits of their own competence and professional scope of practice, including when working with complexity, risk, uncertainty and incomplete information.
- Be responsible and accountable for their decisions, actions and omissions at this level of practice.
- Utilise professional judgement and maturity, understanding when to seek help.
- Demonstrate critical reflection on own practice, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and openness to change.
- Demonstrate effective communication skills, supporting people in making decisions, planning care or seeking to make positive changes, using Health Education England’s framework to promote person-centred approaches in health and care.
- Work collaboratively with an appropriate range of multi-agency and inter-professional resources, developing, maintaining, and evaluating links to manage risk and issues across organisations and settings.
- Evidence the underpinning subject-specific competencies i.e. knowledge, skills and behaviours relevant to the role setting and scope, and demonstrate application of the capabilities to these, in an approach that is appropriate to the individual role, setting and scope.
- Act as a clinical role model/advocate for developing and delivering care that is responsive to changing requirements, informed by an understanding of local population health needs, agencies, and networks.
- Actively implement effective systems and processes for infection control management whilst working clinically and be a role model for other members of the clinical team.
- Initiate drug therapy/medication within the parameters of agreed clinical guidelines and in accordance with the legal framework you work under to supply and prescribe medicines (if from professional group legally entitled to prescribe).
- Apply specialist knowledge to identify opportunities for deprescribing in order to reduce risk of adverse effects, recognizing balance between risk and benefit of established drug therapies.
- Identify patients with frailty who may be approaching end of life, through holistic assessment and recognition of features of severe frailty and guide appropriate patient-centered management.
For further details, please see the attached JD
Person specification
Knowledge & Experience
Essential criteria
- Extensive demonstrable experience within Geriatric Medicine
- Demonstrable management ability and leadership experience
- Excellent clinical and practical skills in care of patients with frailty
- Demonstrable experience of education and supervision
- Recent demonstrable experience in clinical audit and quality improvement
- Ability to influence policy and clinical guidance
- Proven evidence of practice in line with the HEE (2017) multi-professional framework
Desirable criteria
- Autonomous practice within Geriatric Medicine
- Change management skills
- Multi-professional supervision
- Appraisal skills
- Implementing policy and clinical guidance
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Statutory Professional Registration
- Masters Degree in Advanced Practice, or equivalent
- Independent non-medical prescribing, if from a core profession in which NMP is supported
- Advanced Life Support provider
Desirable criteria
- Management package
- Instructor on life support courses
- Education/Mentorship/ Supervision Course
- Leadership course
- Diploma in Geriatric Medicine, RCP
Aptitude & Abilities
Essential criteria
- Ability to recognise and analyse complex situations and take appropriate action.
- Proven evidence of relevant, recent study and continuing professional development
- Ability to communicate effectively both in written and verbal form
- Flexible and responsive to changing environments
- Demonstrates understanding and incorporates customer care
- Ability to work with complex and diverse health informatics systems
- Ability to manage own case load working to priorities and deadlines
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Zoe Grigson
- Job title
- Support Manager, Geriatric Medicine
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01752 433420
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