Job overview

Are you ready for change and to develop as a Critical Care SLT?

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join BHRUT SLT Team as a Band 7 to continue developing and lead our Critical Care services across both our sites (Queen’s Hospital/King George Hospital).

This role covers 4 ITU units alongside the MDT working with lots of different specialities. We also run an ITU step down service on our acute wards to improve the patient experience and ensure continuity of care. We are also incredibly proud to have recently established a Phagenyx (pharyngeal electrical stimulation) service for suitable patients presenting with profound neurogenic dysphagia. 

You should have extensive experience managing acquired swallowing and communication difficulties within acute and ITU settings. VFSS competencies and basic trache competencies are essential. FEES competencies are desirable however we can provide in house training on FEES and vented traches if needed.
 
You will lead on representing SLT at weekly MDT meetings, Quality and Safety meetings, tracheostomy ward rounds and much more. You will also be involved in our 6 VFSS slots and FEES clinics 3 days per week.

Our SLT Team is ever growing and very supportive. We provide ample CPD, training opportunities and peer support. Service development, audit and quality improvement is actively encouraged throughout the team. 

If you’re interested why not check out our twitter account @BHRUT_SLT to get more insight into our team.

Main duties of the job

To provide autonomous specialist assessment, treatment and advice to inpatients who present with a wide range of complex swallowing and communication difficulties secondary to critical care admissions; including management of patients with tracheostomies. 

To support providing highly specialist assessment, treatment and advice to patients within acute inpatient areas including acute medicine, surgical and respiratory patients as required

To work alongside other members of the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) to give highly specialist guidance, advice and education to on matters relating to your specialist area.

Provide leadership for your team (in conjunction with the Clinical Lead) in planning, coordinating, delivering and evaluating the Speech and Language Therapy service provided to patients within your area; this may be cross-site. 

To provide a lead role in teaching, supervising and appraising peers, Band 6, Band 5, Student Speech and Language Therapists, Speech and Language Therapy Assistants. 

To contribute to running and developing of the Speech and Language service through audit, development of policies, procedures and guidelines using evidence-based practise.

Undertake supervision, mentoring and performance development plans to promote clinical and professional effectiveness of self and others. This includes performance management, management of disciplinary issues in liaison with Clinical Lead SLT. 

Working for our organisation

We’re an organisation that is getting better and better and our improvements are driven by a determination to deliver care we’re proud of and our patients are happy with. 

They are benefitting from a new electronic patient record (we were the last acute trust in London to introduce one) and our maternity services have been rated good by the Care Quality Commission. 

We operate from two main sites – KGH in Goodmayes and Queen’s Hospital in Romford. We have two busy emergency departments with more than 346,000 people visiting them last year. We’re campaigning to secure the £35m we need to transform the A&E at Queen’s and get rid of corridor care. 

We’re proud of our regional Neurosciences Centre, Radiotherapy Centre and Hyper Acute Stroke Unit. We’re also part of the North East London Cancer Alliance. 

We run a Women’s Health Hub in Ilford; an Ageing Well Centre in Hornchurch; and Community Diagnostic Centres (CDC) at Barking Community Hospital and at St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub. These CDCs are open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.  

The majority of our 8,400 staff – who come from 146 different countries - live in the three diverse London boroughs we serve and are from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. Many can work flexibly and more than 400 of them are on our Ofsted accredited apprenticeship programmes. We’re proud to be a London Living Wage employer.

Some of the positive changes we’ve made are captured in this film.