Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Dr Vinoda Sharma is currently Specialty Lead for Cardiology; Dr Stavros Apostolakis is the Clinical Director for Admitted Care, of which Cardiology forms a part; Dr Chetan Varma (also an Interventional Consultant Cardiologist) is the Group Director for Medicine and Emergency Care. MMUH has Medical Admission Units adjacent to the Emergency Departments. The Trust runs a ward-based system for general medical patients.

Cardiology day time duties:

The cardiology consultants provide a seven day service for cardiology patients at MMUH. The appointee will participate in day time general cardiac duties as Cardiologist of the Week (COW) at MMUH Cardiology department on a 1 in 10 rota (8am-6pm weekdays), reviewing and managing Cardiology patients, and 8am -2pm on the weekend of the COW week.  On the MMUH AMU, there is a daily consultant ward round on the acute medical unit (after initial assessment by the RMO and medical on-take team) in which patients needing prolonged specialist cardiac or catheter lab management are transferred the Cardiology A2 ward. All the patients requiring cardiology management are reviewed by the cardiology team with daily ward rounds on the cardiology wards, acute medical unit and ward referrals. All suspected acute coronary syndrome patients will be seen, as well as those with significant arrhythmias and those with heart failure.  AMU Cardiology referrals in MMUH are covered by the Interventional Cardiologists who perform a 1:8 cover Monday to Friday from 08:00-12:30 noon. On call weekend interventional cardiologists do a Saturday morning list for acute ward patients. 

Out-patient Clinics at Sandwell and City Hospitals

At Sandwell Hospital, the out-patient department is directly adjacent to the cardiology department and therefore access to exercise testing, echocardiography and rhythm management facilities. At City Hospital, the Birmingham Treatment Centre also provides out-patient facilities adjacent to the Cardiology Department. The appointee would have two cardiology clinics per week. There may be a requirement for the appointee to do outpatient work outside the hospital in line with the “Right Care Right Here” programme.  At present there were a total of about 18000 outpatient attendances per year in the cardiology Dept.  Modern IT systems (UNITY) support delivery of service to improve rapid turnover and communication with primary care and all our patient records are electronic.

Cardiac Intervention/Pacing

MMUH is equipped with state of the art Siemens Artis Icono Biplane catheter labs adjacent to each other with a brand new third catheter lab which opened in March 2026 and is dedicated to pacing and devices. Cath lab coordination is supported using the dedicated Labyrinth^@ IT system and dedicated nurse Cath Lab Coordinator.  One cath lab runs routinely from 8am-6pm and Saturday mornings from 9am -12pm, with the second lab running 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.  Cath labs run mixed lists of acute and elective patients. The Trust has a longstanding PCI programme and has undertaken coronary intervention with off-site surgical support from neighbouring cardiac surgical facilities for over 2 decades. A primary angioplasty service for acute 

myocardial infarction was established in the early 2000s, with 24 hours, 7 day service running since January 2005. 

Bradycardia pacing has been carried out on the Trust sites for over 30 years and biventricular pacing (CRT) and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation since 2006.  We now have a dedicated subcutaneous ICD service run by Dr Shah and Dr Maher. Angiograms and pacing are supported using the Change Healthcare^@ system, images being visible on any PC within the Trust at any time by the cardiology team as well as Cath reports and BCIS returns.

Cardiac Imaging

There are well-developed cardiac imaging services (CMR, echocardiography, stress echo and CTCA) at both City and Sandwell Hospitals and an established Heart Failure Service with strong links over both Sandwell and City campuses.  With the demonstration of the great benefits of the specialist nursing service in Sandwell in avoiding excess hospital appointments and readmissions, the local Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG have recently funded 9 new specialist nurse posts to develop an equally good service in West Birmingham. Research is carried out into a number of aspects of heart failure.

Cardiac diagnostics is a busy department with 12 sonographers (8 with BSE accreditation), performing more than 12,000 TTEs.  The department also performs more than 600 stress echocardiograms and more than 100 TOEs per year. We offer a range of stress echocardiography services including dobutamine stress echo, treadmill exercise stress echo and supine bike exercise stress echo.

A comprehensive nuclear cardiology service is well established on the City site under the direction of Dr A Notghi and Dr M Pandit.

Coronary CT is performed at Sandwell with a Siemens Somatom Definition Flash 256 slice scanners, capable of acquiring a full CT coronary angiogram in a single heartbeat with minimal x-ray exposure. The Cardiac CT programme is expanding rapidly, currently we do 2000 scans a year, but this is predicted to increase in Midland Metropolitan Hospital and with further implementation of the latest NICE guidance for the management and investigation of stable chest pain.

Cardiac MRI is performed with a Siemens Avanto 1.5 Tesla MR scanner at the Sandwell site. The service is on an expansion curve and it is anticipated the current list of  approximately 500 scans a year to increase further in the next 12-18 months. It is anticipated that stress perfusion CMR will become incorporated into the normal workflow at MMUH.

Participation in any of the imaging services would be welcome from a suitably qualified applicant.

The single-site Acute Hospital (MMUH) benefits from co-located specialist services which supports the new Emergency Department with dedicated imaging facility and Assessment Units. It provides state-of-the-art treatment and care for patients from Sandwell and across the region and will become the civic heart of the area and a point of pride for the community.

The working week for a full-time consultant is comprised of 10 programmed activities (PAs) each of which has a nominal timetable value of 4 hours with 1. 5 PAs for SPAs.  Programmed activities that take place outside the hours of 7am and 7pm Monday and Friday or at weekends or on public holidays will have a timetable value of three hours rather than four.  For this post direct clinical care (work relating directly to the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of illness) includes a minimum of 1 imaging session per week, emergency work (including whilst on-call), outpatient activities (minimum of 2 clinics per week), multi-disciplinary meetings about direct patient care, and administration directly related to the above.  Supporting professional activities (that underpin direct clinical care), include participation in training, medical education, continuous 

professional development, formal teaching, audit, clinical management and local clinical governance activities.

For more information on the job role and responsibilities, please refer to the Job Description attached. 

For an informal discussion, please contact:

Dr. Chetan Varma, Consultant Cardiologist and Group Director for Medicine on 0121 507 5841, Email: [email protected]

Dr Vinoda Sharma, Consultant Cardiologist and Specialty Lead on 0121 507 5841      Email: [email protected]