HealthJobsUK

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The successful post holder will become an integral part of our 30 strong combined Paediatric Occupational and Physiotherapy Therapy team. They will be expected to work within our team philosophy, which is “We strongly believe in team working in a happy working environment. Workloads are shared and communication/ support is strongly encouraged. We are mutually responsible for the service and its development and expect everyone to carry out a certain level of responsibility.” It is a fast-paced environment where effective communication, prioritisation, and delegation skills are essential.
As a Major Trauma centre, we treat all complex multi-trauma children from the region and house multiple other specialist orthopaedic services including scoliosis repair, multilevel surgery, and limb reconstruction. We provide a service to the paediatric haemophilia comprehensive centre, working closely with the MDT. As a specialist children’s hospital, we are seeing increasing patient complexity as well as developments in surgical techniques which require us to be innovative in our approach to rehabilitation.

As this post is part of the wider Therapy services department, you will have many opportunities to develop new skills and knowledge through our in-service training. You will be part of a large department of over 290 wte Therapy staff including Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Therapy support staff.
We provide a 7-day therapy service for our Trust and therefore you need to be able to work weekends and bank holiday, in a rota basis. For Physiotherapists this includes our respiratory out of hours service (On-call)

Good communication skills are key to enable close working relationships alongside a team of highly skilled Paediatric Physiotherapists /Occupational Therapists / therapy assistants as well as with the wider multi-disciplinary and multi- professional teams.

 The post holder must be able to build a good rapport with the children and their families/ carers to encourage participation and will be working with children with a wide range of presenting conditions and developmental ages and abilities, and often in emotive situations.  

As an acute trust with unpredictable workloads, we are looking for someone with the ability to work under pressure, problem solve and prioritise tasks. They should be self-motivated and can work on their own or alongside other staff.
As caseloads can often include patients that are acutely unwell, we are looking for someone who has experience working in challenging and emotive situations with active coping strategies and resilience.
 Essential skills for role:
•    The successful post holder should have completed a comprehensive B5 rotation position including proven MSK, acute orthopaedics and paediatrics.
•     You must have acute respiratory On-call/ out of hours experience.
•    Proven paediatric experience is an essential criteria, however this does not need to be hospital-based experience.
•     The applicant must be keen, enthusiastic and have a definite desire to work within paediatrics. 
•    The UHS Therapy services department runs a 7-day service, using a rota system so weekend/BH working and active participation in the On-call out of hours unscheduled acute respiratory services will be expected.
Key duties:
•    You will undertake a specialised paediatric clinical caseload of complex patients as an autonomous practitioner, according to service needs, using clinical reasoning skills and evidence-based practice to provide daily patient assessment, diagnosis and treatment, supporting appropriate and timely discharge across inpatient, and outpatient areas. 
•    You will use a range of assessment and treatment skills largely musculoskeletal and orthopaedic but also respiratory / neurology for holistic patient management. 
•    As a regional centre you will provide specialised clinical therapy advice both within the Trust and externally to other team members and healthcare professionals
•    You will work within our trust values to support patients and their families in their care pathway.
•    You are expected to be involved with service development supporting clinical pathways. 
•    You will be involved in supporting education and training to students, in house staff and staff across our regional network. 
•    You will also be part of our 7-day service rota and on call services. 

Due the unique nature of this post we welcome informal enquires or visits – please contact Michelle Geary ( [email protected] ) or Esther Bhullar [email protected] or on 02381204560
We look forward to hearing from you.
Please note: Any applications written and generated by AI may not be shortlisted.

If you are interested in other Therapy opportunities, please email [email protected]