Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Addenbrookes Hospital is one of the largest and best known acute hospitals in the country, serving as both the ‘local’ hospital for our community, and also a leading regional and national centre for specialist treatment, research and teaching as one of six academic health science centres in the UK.  In the East of England it is the tertiary referral centre for several cancer types, neurosurgery, vascular surgery, HPB, and also provides a hub-and-spoke model for renal medicine.  It is a leading national centre for specialist treatment for rare or complex conditions, such as cancer, neurosciences and organ transplantation.

The Addenbrookes palliative care team is fully multi-professional, providing face to face cover seven days a week, 09:00-17:00 for patients attending and admitted to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. The department comprises Consultants and Residents (both Trainees, IMT3s, and recently Foundation Trainees), band 6 Specialist Support Nurses, band 7 Clinical Nurse Specialists, Psychologists, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy, and excellent administrative support.  In the last three years we have been working hard to increase the visibility and presence of our team across the hospital, with an 18% increase in our referrals, and we have grown links with other specialist departments whose patients commonly present with life-limiting conditions and specialist palliative care needs. 

We now have established links with inpatient Oncology, Haematology (Myeloma), feeding issues MDT, Hepatology, Vascular Surgery, Neurology, Respiratory wards and Renal Medicine - and our team is recognised to be a helpful and responsive service.  In the last year we received over 2,600 inpatient referrals with excellent feedback from patients, families and colleagues alike.  The department also delivers outpatient and community services in the form of outpatient Enhanced Supportive Care (ESC) Clinics for Oncology and Hepatology patients, and the internationally renowned Breathlessness Intervention Service (BIS) that is mainly community-based. 

Organisationally, the Palliative Care department sits within Division C, and is based specifically within the directorate of Integrated Medical Services.  In addition to providing specialist palliative care support to adult patients, it also supports the broader end of life care agenda through strategic involvement and development of models of care and education.  The CQC rated Addenbrookes hospital as “Outstanding” overall for end of life care, and “Outstanding” in the Caring and Well-Led domains in 2018-19. 

The Consultant team has undergone a significant amount of change in the last 3 years, which has created opportunities for more engagement with teaching, with audit and quality improvement, and with research.  The team members are already active in teaching and training and the successful candidate would be expected to share this enthusiasm too.  We are also keen to develop technology-based innovations to enhance palliative care delivery in the hospital, as well as our team’s audit and research portfolios, and although these posts are primarily clinical we are hoping that the successful candidate will also have an interest in at least one of these areas in order to help our team further its strategic objectives.

The Consultant team also has close links with other palliative care teams locally, and in particular with the Arthur Rank Hospice, with whom we share Consultant on-call cover for the hospital and hospice services.

Please refer to the Job description and Person specification attached for further details on the main responsibilities and duties for this post.