Detailed job description and main responsibilities

This post is a great opportunity for an enthusiastic consultant to participate in the development of services in a friendly district general hospital situated in a beautiful part of England. This post will be within the Department of Medicine for Older People (DMOP). The successful applicant will join senior medical staff in Medicine for Older People and Stroke, working to improve the care of emergency medical admissions and frail older people. The Trust has in recent years worked with the Acute Frailty Network to develop a dynamic and progressive approach to the management of frail older people.

We have developed a fully integrated acute frailty unit in the acute medical unit which provides daily weekday geriatrician ward rounds and MDT review. A Frailty SDEC service provides rapid access appointments, medical falls reviews and direct reviews of suitable ED patients. Geriatricians also provide ward rounds in community hospitals in West Dorset and input to locality virtual wards, alongside providing an advice line to local GPs, community frailty teams and paramedics. Together with other members of the team, this appointment will facilitate the ongoing development of the Trust’s frailty pathway, both within and outside the hospital’s walls, in collaboration with Dorset HealthCare, our community partner.

The successful applicant will join the team of senior clinicians in Medicine for Older People and Stroke Medicine.  While this post has been created primarily to further our front door frailty services, there is potential to provide input to several of our current services, depending on the new post holder’s interests.  The job plan can be decided on appointment and can be reviewed and adapted at intervals to meet the strengths of the individual.

The Department of Medicine for Older People includes a 38 bed frailty unit – The Mary Anning Unit – for acute geriatric medical inpatients and including beds and specialism for those inpatients with dementia and requiring complex discharge work; a 23 bed acute and rehabilitation Stroke Unit and various related services. There are 8 dedicated beds in a local community hospital for stroke rehabilitation.

There is an integrated acute frailty unit on the acute medical admissions ward, which flexes bed numbers with demand. Here there is a geriatrician ward round Monday to Friday. This is supported by a multidisciplinary team approach. Our new frailty SDEC opened in February 2025, run by acute practitioners working closely with geriatricians providing timely assessment for frail older patients referred from primary care and other community settings and also drawing suitable patients from the Emergency Department for assessment and facilitation of investigations and early discharge.  We have 10 short stay inpatient beds on the frailty unit, under the care of geriatricians.

We have a well established orthogeriatric liaison service for elderly trauma patients and are developing a liaison service for general surgery. 

There is a well-developed medical admissions unit with good access to timely imaging and laboratory facilities. Once patients have left the admissions unit, a ward-based team approach is established. A team of resident doctors manage all medical acute admissions, led by a medical registrar, on an all-ages medical “take”, supported by the medical consultant on call.  There are close working relationships between the Acute Physicians and the Medicine for Older People consultants. There is a medical handover every morning where new admissions are allocated to appropriate specialties, including MOP.

General medicine patients are able to attend for rapid access assessment via Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC).

The emergency floor is currently in the process of being redesigned, with new processes being developed to ensure patients are seen in the most appropriate environment. For MOP this will mean increased use of our existing Frailty SDEC. All members of the department will be involved in this and there are exciting opportunities to contribute to the development of new admission pathways.

The post holder would be expected to contribute to the all-age medical take, with frequency 1 in 12 weekdays and 1 in 8 weekends.