Job overview

The London Boroughs of Barking, Havering, and Redbridge face unique challenges due to their demographic profiles, particularly with an ageing population. According to the latest census data, around 18% of the combined population of these three boroughs is aged 65 with this proportion being expected to increase in the coming decades as the population continues to age.

Providing high-quality, coordinated care for older adults can be challenging. There is a need for innovative solutions to improve access to geriatric expertise and reduce unnecessary hospital admissions. It is widely recognised that admission to hospital can have negative impact on older patients including deconditioning, hospital acquired infections, malnutrition, delirium, loss of independence, adverse drug events and psychological impact.

BHRUT are committed to changing the model of care for our increasing elderly and frail population by shifting to a more proactive care approach. By doing so we want to identify those people at risk of developing frailty and initiate early interventions to improve management, prevent deterioration and even reverse a person’s level of frailty. At the heart of this will be a multi-professional comprehensive geriatric assessment. We will be implementing further measures to proactively manage patients who may be heading towards a crisis that would otherwise result in attendance to hospital, by providing same and next day urgent assessment appointments. 

Main duties of the job

Where patients require short term intravenous therapy, we will provide the facility to rapidly respond to this need.  All of this is being delivered from our brand-new Health and Wellbeing Hub. This is a multi-provider facility which in addition to the Ageing Well Centre will provide primary and community care, diagnostics, social and voluntary services. 
We have big ambitions to radically change the provision of care for the ageing population of Barking, Havering, and Redbridge and we are looking to recruit a skilled workforce to help us deliver the vision. This is a unique opportunity to be part of a team who will develop and deliver exceptional integrated care pathways. 

The post holder will provide specialist clinical pharmacy support to frailty services at St Georges Health and Wellbeing Hub, including Frailty Virtual Ward. They will deliver medicines-related care to patients, support the provision of medicines management services, participate in education and training and lead on service improvements. 
If you are passionate about the future of care for ageing patients, creative, happy to work flexibly across all the services within the frailty hub and are looking to develop and further your own skills and capabilities within this speciality then, please apply to be part of our vision to create a centre of outstanding care.

Working for our organisation

We’re an organisation that is getting better and better. We were the most improved Trust in England for A&E performance in 2023/24; we’re no longer in special measures; and Matthew Trainer, our Chief Executive, has been named the top CEO by the Health Service Journal. Our improvements are driven by a determination to deliver care we’re proud of and that our patients are happy with.

Many of our 8,000 staff – who come from 146 different countries - live in the three diverse London boroughs we serve and the majority are from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. More than 400 of them are on apprenticeship programmes and we’re proud to be a London Living Wage employer.

We operate from two main sites - King George Hospital (KGH) in Goodmayes and Queen’s Hospital in Romford. We have two of the busiest emergency departments in London – more than 300,000 people visited our A&Es in 2023.

Patients across north east London are benefitting from two new state of the art theatres at KGH and our Community Diagnostic Centres at Barking Community Hospital and St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub will significantly increase the number of scans that can be carried out.

We’re looking forward to introducing an electronic patient record next year. This will mean the records of any patient visiting one of the seven hospitals run by BHRUT and Barts Health will be accessible to the clinical teams. It’ll make things easier for staff and will be better for patients.