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Job summary

Main area
Paediatrics
Grade
NHS Medical & Dental: Consultant
Contract
12 months (Fixed Term)
Hours
  • Full time
  • Part time
Both Part time (8 sessions per week) and Full time (10 sessions per week) are available
Job ref
200-CW-712531-7473981-CA
Employer
St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
St George’s Hospital
Town
London
Salary
£109,725 - £145,478 per annum, pro rata
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
06/11/2025 23:59

Employer heading

St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust logo

Locum Consultant Paediatrician

NHS Medical & Dental: Consultant

St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is the regional specialist care provider for south west London, Surrey and beyond. The trust provides a high quality, comprehensive range of health services from leading edge tertiary and trauma care to community services.

With national and regional referrals added to our local 3.5m catchment, we serve a population of around 5m.

Co-located with St George’s, University of London and with both organisations now in a formal strategic alliance with King’s Health Partners, the trust delivers with its partners high quality research and education both of which contribute to the healthcare provision of tomorrow.

Acute and tertiary health services are delivered from over 1,000 beds across two sites, by around 8,000 staff.

St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is a major acute hospital that offers very specialist care for complex injuries and illnesses, including trauma, neurology, cardiac care, renal transplantation, cancer care and stroke. It has a helipad which opened in spring 2014 and the work of its emergency department can currently be seen on Channel 4’s ‘24 Hours in A&E’ programme. The hospital also provides all the usual care you would expect from a local NHS district general hospital.

We also provide services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton. These include outpatient rapid diagnostic and treatment facilities, a minor injuries unit, limb fitting services and 70 elderly, intermediate care and rehabilitation beds.

As well as hospital services, we provide a wide variety of specialist, maternity and community services to children, adults, older people and people with learning disabilities. These services are provided from St John’s Therapy Centre, 11 health centres and clinics, schools, nursing homes and people’s own homes. The trust also manages the healthcare service at HMP Wandsworth.


 

Job overview

ST GEORGE'S UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

ST GEORGE'S HOSPITAL, LONDON SW17 0QT

Locum Consultant Paediatrician - 12 MONTHS FIXED TERM CONTRACT

Full Time (10PA) and Part Time (8PA) roles available. 

Applications are invited for a dynamic, enthusiastic consultant paediatrician to join the Acute General Paediatric Service at St George’s Hospital. This is a 12 month fixed term opportunity, with two roles available (one full-time 10PA post and one part-time  8PA post).

The service has undergone expansion in the last 5 years as part of the Trust initiative to comply with acute care standards, enable the provision of a dedicated consultant of the week for the inpatient wards and emergency care and an out of hours rota with a resident consultant presence over extended hours seven days per week.  In 2018 an ambulatory unit for children and young people opened, in addition to the paediatric assessment unit in the Children’s Emergency Department.  This consultant delivered unit has improved emergency flow, reduced inpatient admissions and provides a better quality of care for patients with urgent care needs. 

 

Main duties of the job

The postholder will work with ten other colleagues to provide a full general paediatric service.  This will include a 1:5 attending week with all elective commitments cancelled, to cover either inpatient wards or the ambulatory unit. During these weeks they will provide daily ward rounds/patient reviews, attend board rounds and safety huddles, cover emergency admissions and referrals, liaise with PICU regarding step-down patients and attend the morning and afternoon handover rounds. 

The non-service weeks are varied and will include outpatient work, education, academic and management activities.  A key development in outpatient work in the last five years has been to provide integrated clinics in primary care and improved rapid access general clinics.  The post holder will form part of a locality based team within the local area, responsible for delivering an integrated service with primary care practitioners.  St George’s paediatric department is a highly rated teaching and training centre and there will be plenty of opportunity to contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching activities.

We encourage all general paediatric consultants to develop a specialty interest to work within and alongside our specialty colleagues.  Currently we are looking for paediatricians with a special interest in asthma, epilepsy and non-malignant haematology.

Working for our organisation

St. George’s Hospital is a large multi-specialty facility based in South-West London, offering a wide range of adult, paediatric and neonatal services. It is co-located with a medical school - St. George’s, University of London. Children managed at SGH are either local or regional (tertiary), patients. There has been a steady increase in the number of paediatric attendees in the Emergency Department, in inpatient emergency admissions and outpatient referrals for local children. This reflects the increasing young population in SW Thames. Tertiary children’s services at SGH include endocrinology, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, neurology, oncology, allergy, and respiratory medicine; and paediatric surgery, PICU, major trauma and neurosurgery.

The department has its own outpatient department (the Dragon Centre), a Child Development Centre and 5 wards with 57 inpatient beds, a 10 bed PICU/HDU and 36 cot NICU. There are 14 general paediatric consultants and nearly 60 specialty paediatric consultants and a fully staffed EWTD compliant middle grade and specialty trainee rota, composed of grid trainees, regional paediatric trainees, GP trainees, fellows and F1 doctors.

The department provides teaching and training for undergraduate medical students from City St George’s University, based on site at St George’s Hospital.  There is a huge programme of teaching and research within the medical school, with active participation from the consultant body.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Inpatient wards

The paediatric in-patient facilities are made up of four paediatric wards - a day case ward, a surgical ward, a medical ward, and an infectious diseases / oncology ward. There is a 12 bedded intensive care / high dependency unit with a step-down facility.  The general paediatric ward has a dedicated young person’s bay.  During attending weeks the postholder will be consultant of the week, responsible for leading the care of all general admissions.

Ambulatory care centre

The dedicated children’s ambulatory facility (Blue Sky Centre) aims to improve flow through the emergency department, avoid attendance through enhanced support to primary care and facilitate early ward discharge.  It is primarily a consultant delivered service with an active programme to develop Advanced Nurse Practitioners to support an expansion in future years.  Children requiring medical daycase treatment will be managed here in co-ordination with community children’s nursing and medical specialties.  Cover for the ambulatory unit will also be provided on a consultant of the week basis.

Outpatient clinics

The post holder will provide a general paediatric clinic in the non-service weeks (32 per year). These clinics will see both new and follow up patients. They will also provide rapid access clinics for urgent / semi-urgent GP referrals on a rota basis, and have regular integrated clinics in local Primary Care hubs.  The post holder will also have the opportunity to develop outpatient specialist skills in management of chronic conditions, working alongside tertiary and secondary paediatric subspecialist services at St George’s and our partner tertiary paediatric centres.  These include (but are not limited to) asthma, epilepsy and non-malignant haematology (particularly haemoglobinopathies). 

Out of hours work and on call

The out of hours duties will be approximately 1:11. On weekdays, including Fridays, the consultant on call takes over at 17:00 and remains resident in the hospital until 22:00, after handover to the night staff. At weekends the consultant is on site and performing ward rounds and emergency care between 08:30 and 22:00 and on call from home thereafter.

Management responsibility

The postholder will be expected to work with the Care Group Lead, Clinical Governance Lead and service management team on audit, guideline development and review of clinical incidents. A major goal of the Care Group is to extend collaborative working between the Care Group and stakeholders, including the Emergency Department, CAMHS, surgical Care Groups and primary care.  The posts will include liaison roles to develop strategy, improve joint working and implement improvements in these key areas. There are a number of opportunities within the Trust to take on management roles extending outside Children’s Services for suitably skilled applicants.  All SPA time will be expected to demonstrate outcomes that will be reviewed at annual job planning.

Education, training and development

The postholder will be expected to be involved with teaching junior paediatric staff in the morning tutorials, case presentations and Paediatric Grand Round. They will also have clinical and educational supervision responsibilities for trainees and will need to maintain competencies to support this role. They will be expected to support teaching of undergraduate students through SiFT funding and the department has close links with St George’s University of London.  Funding is available for personal CPD activities.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • MBBS or equivalent
  • MRCPCH or equivalent
  • Full GMC registration
  • On the GMC's Specialist Register or within 6 months of CCT at the time of scheduled interview
Desirable criteria
  • Relevant higher degree: MD or PhD

Training

Essential criteria
  • Child Safeguarding Level 3
  • APLS
Desirable criteria
  • Training and experience in a special interest to complement our team

Clinical Experience

Essential criteria
  • Able to demonstrate having achieved the competencies equivalent to the Highest Specialist Paediatric Training
  • Wide experience in paediatrics within a dedicated paediatric unit
Desirable criteria
  • Up to date experience of ambulatory care and integrated care
  • Up to date experience of inpatient and outpatient management of paediatric asthma, epilepsy, non malignant haematology

Clinical Governance

Essential criteria
  • Track record of performing clinical audit, quality improvement projects and guideline development with demonstrable outcomes
Desirable criteria
  • Contribution to wider systems of governance

Teaching

Essential criteria
  • Experience in training undergraduate medical students and postgraduate doctors
  • Experience and knowledge of critical appraisal of evidence, so as to improve clinical outcomes
Desirable criteria
  • Post graduate teaching course
  • Higher qualification in education
  • Able to initiate and carry out medical research projects.
  • Authorship of research papers

Management

Essential criteria
  • Leadership skills
  • Training in management at registrar or equivalent level
  • Understanding of management issues including medical management, clinical governance, service planning, and quality improvement
Desirable criteria
  • Ability to initiate service change
  • Experience of management

Other Qualities

Essential criteria
  • Ability to work as a team with professional colleagues from medical and other disciplines.
  • Good communication skills
  • Flexible approach
  • IT skills
Desirable criteria
  • Demonstration of commitment to equality and diversity in a team

Other Requirements

Essential criteria
  • MDU/MPS
  • Satisfactory enhanced DBS and required immigration status

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Trust IDCapital Nurse, LondonNo smoking policyAge positiveArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardDisability confident employerStep into healthDisability Advice Line

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Dr Emma Sage
Job title
Care Group Lead for Acute Paediatrics
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
020 8725 2931
Additional information

Dr Attah Ocholi, Clinical Director Children's Services via email [email protected]  

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