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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The appointee will join the three other full time consultants and one part time consultant at Ashford and St Peters Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust working in conjunction with Royal Surrey County Hospital. This will be working a 1:8 attending rota at the RSCH site, and a coordinated 1:8 out-of-hours on call rota covering clinical and laboratory haematology and blood transfusion. The laboratory services across the three Surrey sites are delivered within a common shared LIMS platform with integrated laboratory management and access to Cellavison technology.

Clinical haematology sits within the Medicine Division (Divisional Director: Dr Jonathan Robin, Consultant Acute Physician) and laboratory haematology/blood transfusion sits within the Diagnostics and Therapeutics Division. Each division is supported by a divisional manager as well as designated finance and HR representatives. The Trust gained Foundation status in late 2010, licensed from the 1st December, and was the first Trust to have done so under the new standards.

The formation of an integrated pathology network with our neighbouring Trusts, Frimley Park Hospital and the Royal Surrey County Hospital was formalised as the Surrey Pathology Services on 1st April 2012 with subsequent inclusion of Wexham Park Hospital and Heatherwood. In 2016 the Surrey Pathology Service expanded to become the Berkshire & Surrey Pathology Services (BSPS: Director of Pathology Nicola Newman) with the integration of The Royal Berkshire Hospital NHS Trust pathology service. The locality laboratory at St Peters Hospital provides the network specialist coagulation service. The network immunology, virology and cytology laboratories are also located on the St Peters site. An integrated network-wide management structure for the laboratory pathology services is in place including detailed governance and line management arrangements with shared budgetary mechanisms between the partner organisations.

In July 2016 an SLA with the Royal Marsden Hospital (RMH) was agreed and signed leading to the SI HMDS service for the Alliance being delivered by the RMH.

All sites provide hot haematology, blood transfusion and biochemistry laboratory services for their respective hospitals. The main histopathology and cytology laboratories are located at RSCH. The microbiology laboratories and main haematology laboratory are located at FPH, where CellaVision is installed, allowing potential for remote blood film review. General practice work from RSCHs catchment is analysed at the FPH laboratory taking full advantage of its investment in automated specimen handling. The two sites share a single laboratory information system (Winpath Enterprise). A molecular biology laboratory provides a broad and expanding range of tests.

Clinical haematology services are provided within the framework of a new integrated service and a shared haematology oncology MDT with the Royal Surrey County Hospital and within the wider context of the St Lukes Cancer Alliance. This post will include all elements of haematology practice (malignant and non-malignant).

The busy day unit is supported by a junior doctor, a haematology clinical nurse specialist and four haematology nurses (band 6 x3, band 5 x1) managed by a band 7 Specialist lead nurse for the haematology day unit and infusion unit at Ashford. The haematology nurses also support the level-1 inpatient activity. Two anticoagulant clinical nurse specialists and an anticoagulant specialist BMS deliver the anticoagulant service with the clinical support of the consultants and the hospital transfusion practitioner is based within the blood transfusion laboratory working closely with the biomedical scientists and network team of HTPs.

At Royal Surrey County Hospital Clinical Haematology is managed within the Surgery and Oncology Specialty Business Unit (SBU) which is based in the St Lukes Cancer Centre site at the RSCH and provides services including radiotherapy to residents of Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire, a catchment over 1.3 million. Clinical Haematology falls under the Clinical directorate of Oncology and Haematology.

The consultant haematologists are members of the Oncology and Surgery Specialty Business Unit with admitting rights to the 31 bedded oncology/haematology ward and the support of junior oncology medical staff (6 junior doctors, 2 covering Haematology (one GP trainee and one CMT) in addition to one haematology specialist registrar. There are currently 8 level 2 beds nominally designated for haematology inpatients but admission is according to clinical need and ring-fencing is currently not applied. Access to the general medical and oncology outpatient clinics, general and oncology day unit facilities is also provided. There is no private ward at the RSCH.

There is 24 hour junior doctor cover/presence on the haematology/oncology ward with direct admission under haematology care set by a series of defined criteria. There is no haematology SpR on call. Haematology advice out of hours comes directly from the consultant. Only registrar grade or above can contact the haematologist out of hours. For ward emergencies the medical registrar and ITU provide cross-cover.

In addition to the main duties listed above, the following duties apply:

Engage with medical, nursing, management and all relevant co-workers in the delivery of department objectives: to provide clinical leadership, improve the patient experience; ensure the highest quality clinical care.

Actively participate in and support other staff with education, research, audit and clinical governance activities involving a multi-disciplinary workforce across the department

Participate in the professional training of the staff in the department, both medical and non-medical, and contribute as required to teaching sessions for other hospital staff as well as undergraduate and postgraduate staff, including supervision of junior medical staff. Teaching and training will require verification of teaching certification

Support recruitment, appraisal, development and mentoring activities to a multi-disciplinary, multi-professional team.

MAIN DUTIES OF THE POST

Deliver direct clinical care to patients, including assessment, diagnosis, investigations, treatment, and management, in accordance with Trust policies and practices.

Provide comprehensive senior clinical cover to the Department, including ward rounds, multi-disciplinary team meetings, clinics, and day unit support.

Participate in consultant cover time to review potential admissions and develop rapid assessment triage strategies.

Contribute to teaching/training, audit, and managerial responsibilities as appropriate.

Have a continuing responsibility for patient care, ensuring safe handover and prompt opinions when requested.

Engage fully with department objectives to provide clinical leadership and improve patient experience and quality of care.

Actively participate in education, research, audit, and clinical governance activities involving a multi-disciplinary workforce.

Support recruitment, appraisal, development, and mentoring activities for the team.

Undertake any other duties appropriate for a consultant.

LEARNING, DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH

The Trust encourages and supports consultants with a special interest to develop their interest, where it meets department objectives, and can be audited and reviewed, and provide learning opportunities for other staff.

Participate in clinical audit activities of the department and hospitals, ensuring record-keeping is effective.

Undertake research and develop special interests within the limits of clinical and service workload.

Undertake continuing medical education internally and externally with study leave entitlement as appropriate.

SUPPORTING PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES (SPA):

ASPH is committed to ensuring that all Consultants have dedicated SPAs within their job plan which they will be expected to carry out on site/ in the workplace. Specific responsibilities will be developed on appointment and according to areas of interest, but Supporting Professional Activities (SPAs) are intended to include

Audit, research, and local clinical governance activity

Formal teaching and preparation (e.g. giving lectures, seminars)

Post-graduate teaching, and training (e.g. of junior doctors, medical students)

external teaching and education delivery (e.g. ATLS, APLS)

Clinical management, attendance at departmental and trust meetings

Appraisal, Job planning and rota organisation

Service development, quality improvement work, Major incident planning

SPA activity will be scheduled based on individual preference, and to meet the needs of the service.