Job overview

We are advertising a Consultant Geriatrician post to join our department. 

This post is available to enhance and support the Care of the Elderly wards within the Jubilee Wing and enhance and develop the Care of the Elderly Acute Frailty service. The post will be for 10 programmed activities (PAs) per week with an additional 0.76 PAs available for programmed speciality weekend work. The appointee would support the current Care of the Elderly medicine service and work alongside established Consultant Geriatricians whose interests include Falls and Syncope, Parkinson’s disease, Osteoporosis, Rehabilitation & Community geriatrics and Acute Frailty.

Main duties of the job

The advertised post will have a dual focus on providing care to inpatients on one of our Care of the Elderly wards and enhancing and developing our Acute Frailty service. On the wards, the role will involve working closely with the ward multi-disciplinary team, providing supervision and training for resident doctors and ensuring the continuation of high standards of care for older patients at Gateshead.

While working with the Acute Frailty service in A&E, the successful applicant will have the opportunity to lead our dedicated multi-disciplinary team and develop the service through continuous quality improvement cycles and data collection. In addition, there are opportunities for working closely with community teams, the COTE virtual ward and the wider medical staff based on EAU and SDEC.

Development of the Acute Frailty service is driven by our recently updated Trust strategy and the long term goals of the NHS 10 year plan to move hospital care into the community and transform our services from analogue to digital. A candidate with leadership and ambition in these areas would be welcomed.

Opportunities for developing additional areas of interest in areas such as the Frailty Virtual ward or in Outpatient services such as Osteoporosis will be available to the successful candidate. We are looking for applicants who hold an ambition to work in Gateshead Health Foundation Trust for the long term and develop their career with us.

Working for our organisation

Based in the North East of England we provide a range of hospital and community health services from our leading facilities, including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Blaydon urgent care centre and Bensham Hospital, all within Gateshead.

Established in 2005, we were one of the first foundation trusts in the country and since then have consistently achieved the highest levels of care for patients.

We now employ around 4,800 staff and currently provide 444 hospital beds across the Gateshead region.

Our values should be the ‘golden thread’ which runs through everything we do – they are the core of who we are. Our five values can easily be remembered by the simple acronym ICORE; Innovation, Care, Openness, Respect, Engagement.

We have a number of staff networks including the Global Ethnic Majority (GEM) network, D-Ability network, LGBTQ+ Network and the Women’s Network, to challenge us and help us to constantly improve. Our Armed Forces network is one of our emerging networks.

The health and wellbeing of our staff is one of our highest priorities, and we offer a range of support and initiatives as part of our ‘Balance’ programme balancegateshead.com to cater for our diverse workforce, so that your individual needs can be supported, allowing you a happy and healthy working experience with us.