Highly Specialist Podiatrist

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

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Job overview

We are looking for an experienced and motivated HCPC registered podiatrist to join our Community Podiatry Service as a Highly specialist Podiatrist covering the West Lancashire patch on a 9-month fixed-term basis. This is an exciting opportunity for someone who is passionate about leading high-quality community podiatry services and supporting teams to deliver safe, effective and person-centred care across a range of community settings.

The post holder will have responsibility for the delivery of the clinical service within the defined area, providing visible leadership. You will play a key role in ensuring services are efficient, effective, well‑co‑ordinated and responsive, with quality and patient experience at the centre of everything you do.

The role will involve regular travel across multiple sites, Therefore, the post holder must be able to meet the travel requirements of this post.

Main duties of the job

The Advanced clinician will take high level responsibility for the triage, clinical assessments and diagnosis of highly complex health and well‑being needs within a defined sphere of practice. They will implement, evaluate and modify highly complex care/ interventions which they have developed to meet those needs. The Advanced clinician will provide high level care as specified below for a client group and work across professional disciplines, co‑ordinating activities as required.

To work as a Highly Specialist Podiatrist with a high degree of autonomy across the multidisciplinary setting.

Leading the Podiatry Team on the management of patients. This will include the assessment, diagnosis, development and implementation of highly specialist programmes of care to patient's as well as providing expert advice on the management of complex patients to others within the team.

The post holder will lead on the development and implementation of service innovations within their portfolio, as well as the development and dissemination of training to the Podiatry Team.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Delivering high level and complex triage, clinical assessment diagnostics, treatment and evaluation of the needs within Health and Well-being.

Providing leadership, promoting a learning culture for colleagues and other agencies, leading service innovations and demonstrating high level problem solving.

Ensuring excellence in service delivery through personal and service development, underpinned by evidence based practice and research, embedded in the quality assurance agenda.

Driving innovation, managing the change process to ensure your service continues to be flexible and proactive to reflect the needs of the wider Health and Wellbeing community.

MANAGERIAL / LEADERSHIP (including financial / physical resources and staffing)

• Delivering change within sphere of practice, when and where indicated, to improve service delivery.
• Influencing, motivating, supporting and enabling others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organisation.
• To provide high level advice and guidance in working with colleagues locally to ensure best practice across all disciplines in the assessment, treatment and long term management of patient/clients within sphere of practice
• To identify innovations and lead the implementation of new working practices in conjunction with patients/ service users, health, wellbeing, local authority and third sector partners.
• To take responsibility for their own high level and complex decision making and the decisions of their team which effect service delivery.
• To train, supervise / case manage and performance manage staff and students. This will include for example the use of formal appraisal documentation, monitoring sickness absence etc.
• To manage resources including stock control to ensure they relate to the overall objectives and responsibilities of the organisation.

CLINICAL

To be responsible for the specialist assessment of complex care needs and the development, implementation and evaluation of programmes of care using a high degree of autonomy and act as a named practitioner.

To triage patients with highly complex needs.

To undertake highly complex clinical assessments of patients/ service users within sphere of advanced practice.

To determine a clinical diagnosis and make high level decisions regarding appropriate treatment/ care plans.

Implement highly complex care/ interventions according to clinical need.

Evaluate highly complex care /interventions based on evidence from clinical outcomes and best practice.

To provide advanced clinical advice, support, training to patients/ service users, families, carers and professional colleagues to improve their journey and their health and well being.

To be professionally accountable for all aspects of own work including the management of patients in your care.

Registered practitioners who are non medical prescribers are accountable for their prescribing activities by ensuring they are aware of their Professional accountability and any restrictions or special considerations in their prescribing practice.

To develop and maintain the high level clinical skills required to work as an advanced practitioner.

Where the administration of drugs is a requirement, this should be undertaken in line with trust policies and procedures and in following the NMC Guidelines for administration of Medicines Act 1992 and Misuse of Drugs Act 1991.

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

To maintain own professional/ personal development (CPD) by keeping abreast of any new trends and developments, and incorporating them as appropriate into your work. To support junior staff to do likewise.

Ensure all mandatory training is accessed and kept up to date.

To be an active member of relevant training programmes attending and delivering presentations at staff meetings/tutorials and by attending relevant professional short courses and being a reflective practitioner.

To participate in the supervision scheme as supervisee and supervisor when appropriate.

To develop and deliver relevant evidence based training to patients, families, carers, Health and Wellbeing and local authority colleagues and third sector providers.

To provide specific training as required to the patient, family, carers and other members of the multidisciplinary team on the clinical and therapeutic management of an individual to support their health and wellbeing.

CLINICAL GOVERNANCE / RESEARCH AUDIT

Registered Practitioners are required to evidence maintenance of their registration with the relevant regulatory body and work to their Code of Professional Conduct.

To benchmark current service delivery against local and national clinical guidelines and standards of care.

To lead on current best practice, based on the benchmarking outcomes.

To translate local and national guidelines and train Health and Wellbeing staff to ensure they have the skills and knowledge required to deliver effective services.

To measure and evaluate own work and current practices through the use of evidence based projects, audit, research, statistical information and outcome measures and lead others in doing so.

To network with practitioner colleagues within the trust and across the North West and nationally, to learn together and share good practice.

To interpret and implement quality assurance practices within own work situation.

To identify and minimise clinical and non clinical risk to minimise risk of harm to patients, staff & visitors.

Contributes to the formulation and implementation of clinical policies and procedures as appropriate.

COMMUNICATION

To communicate complex patient and service related information effectively to Health and Wellbeing and local authority colleagues and third sector agencies.

Use complex communication skills and knowledge when working with patients, their families and other provider agencies.

Demonstrates professional sensitivity and empathy during the emotional demand of high exposure to distressing circumstances where there may be difficulties in accepting or understanding.

To involve the patient and the family/carers in all relevant discussions about their management and decision that are made about treatment techniques and facilitating patient involvement in the planning development, delivery and evaluation of the service.

To assess capacity, gain valid informed consent and have the ability to work within a legal framework with patients who lack capacity to consent to treatment.

To maintain accurate comprehensive and up-to-date documentation, in line with legal and departmental requirements, and communicate assessment and treatment results to the appropriate disciplines in the form of reports and letters.

To collect appropriate data and statistics for the use in the review of the service delivery.

To use appropriate information technology skills for communication when required.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Degree/ Diploma in Podiatric Medicine
• Master's degree / Module /post graduate qualification in relevant area of clinical expertise (or working towards) / equivalent knowledge and experience to Masters level
• Up to date HCPC Registration
• Evidence of up-to-date CPD Portfolio
• POM-A / LA certificate

Desirable criteria

• Relevant short post graduate specialist courses
• Assessor/ Mentor/Facilitator Training
• Supplementary medical prescribing

Skills

Essential criteria

• Excellent communication skills (written & verbal)
• Good organisational and time management skills
• Ability to manage own caseload and prioritise work
• Ability to communicate complex information to patients, carers and staff
• Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team
• Ability to utilise assessment skills and instrumentation effectively
• Presentation skills

Desirable criteria

• Demonstrate experience of managing difficult situations
• Ability to reflect on experiences and apply lessons learnt to self and others

Experience

Essential criteria

• Evidence of expertise in podiatry field
• Supervision of staff and students
• Effective change management and problem-solving experience
• Audit and research practices relevant to clinical area
• Experience and knowledge in the management of a wide variety of complex podiatry conditions
• Demonstrate a commitment to delivering evidence-based practice
• Evidence of introducing service developments and innovation

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• An understanding of the varied and complex needs of the patient group
• An understanding of Shared Decision Making an understanding of other relevant legislation
• Understanding of local, national, professional policies/guidance
• Demonstrate an understanding of own scope of practice and the implications for self and others

Values

Essential criteria

• Continuous improvement - committed to making improvements to our services for the benefit of all
• Accountability - taking ownership to anticipate, develop and deliver high quality care
• Respect - how we treat others in an inclusive and supportive way
• Enthusiasm - demonstrate our passion and pride for what we do and how we do it
• Support - actively supporting others with compassion and courage

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email

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