Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Acute Medicine team is responsible for 5 areas, and the post-holder will be involved in the management of patients in all these areas:

• The Higher Monitoring Unit (HMU) is a 7 bedded unit for the most severely unwell medical patients outside of ICU.   It provides a 2:1 nursing ratio, continuous non-invasive cardiovascular and oxygen saturation monitoring and level 2 respiratory support (non-invasive ventilation and high flow nasal oxygen).
• The Acute Medical Unit (AMU) is a 46 bedded unit where acute medicine patients are managed in their first 24 hours of admission, with the aim of diagnosing, treating and discharging patients, or transferring them to a specialty ward.  Advanced procedures including lumbar punctures and pleural procedures are frequently performed, alongside point of care ultrasound. 
• The Short Stay Unit (SSU) is currently 10 bedded unit where on-going management is provided to patients with acutely reversible pathology, with an estimated discharge time of less than 72 hours.
• The Same Day Emergency Care Unit (SDEC) is an ambulatory unit situated within SSU. The aim of SDEC is to improve the number of patients referred to medicine being seen, treated and discharged the same day
• The Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit (AECU) is currently expanding.  It provides same day emergency care for patients referred to the acute medical take, and has close links with many specialties, enabling the ambulatory management of patients traditionally admitted to specialty wards. 

In all our areas there are daily consultant ward rounds.  All of our consultants are trained and work in a second specialty including intensive care medicine, geriatric medicine, respiratory medicine, stroke medicine and endocrinology.  This provides a huge breadth of knowledge for the management of our patients, and we work closely together as a team, discussing our patients in a daily MDT.  We have an award-winning embedded therapy team, providing physiotherapy cover to HMU and enabling same-day discharges of frail patients requiring home re-enablement and care.  We have a team of embedded interface geriatricians, who are specialists in managing patients with acute frailty presentations.

PRINCIPLE RESPONSIBILITIES

General

•  Ensure that patient experience, patient safety and clinical effectiveness are of the highest standard, meeting national and local outcome measures and standards.
• Role model Trust leadership behaviours.
• Cultivate an open & honest culture where people feel able to raise concerns & share good practice.
• Ensure effective implementation of all Trust policies, procedures and standards within the wards/departments.
• Ensure the clinical area practice within Data Protection/ Confidentiality/ Caldicott principles.
• Work collaboratively with clinical and non-clinical colleagues across the Trust to ensure effective and efficient delivery of services.
• Ensure that effective communication processes are in place.
• Contribute to the development of a high performance culture for the directorate.
• To identify modernising opportunities to utilise digital opportunities to enhance care, patient empowerment and communication.

Clinical and Quality

•  Supports the Trust capacity and flow processes to ensure patients access the care needed at the appropriate time and receive their care in the right clinical setting.
• Actively support the process to discharge patients safely and timely, which requires helping ward teams to set patients up with remote monitoring kit and explaining to patients how to use it.  
• To review patients with daily contact through the most appropriate medium, including patient symptom assessment and observations. To interpret findings and form a list of differential diagnoses and a treatment plan.
• Maintain timely, accurate and appropriate documentation, whilst communicating the outcome of clinical encounters to GPs and other health professional in a timely manner.
• Foster good relationships by working collaboratively with the multidisciplinary team.
• To ensure wards have appropriate equipment to provide to patients on discharge and transfer
• Close interaction and care coordination with maternity triage service for the management of pregnant women.
• Instructing and counselling patients & their relatives with regard to mental and physical health issues.
• Supporting and contributing to timely discharge planning including completing discharge summaries and support optimising bed capacity. 
• Work to improve the quality of patient experience within the directorate.
• Participating in writing up service evaluation results
• Identify opportunities to improve quality and deliver best value for the service.

Teaching and Training

• Participate in the development and expansion of the service including:

• • Attending teaching and developing skills on literature review.
  • Engaging in collecting data and patient feedback.
  • Proactive role in developing pathways, including literature research.

Personal Development

•  Takes responsibility for attending statutory and mandatory training in accordance with the Trusts’ training needs analysis and mandatory training matrix. Makes effective use of e-learning opportunities to achieve compliance with mandatory training.
• Takes responsibility for own continuing professional development and performance, maintaining own portfolio in accordance with Professional body revalidation requirements. Is able to identify own development needs in relation to current practice and future plans, setting personal development objectives.