Senior Rapid Access Physiotherapist

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust; City Of London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading NHS Trust in London is seeking a motivated Senior Physiotherapist to join their Rapid Access Services. This role involves providing urgent assessments in patients' homes, facilitating discharges from acute hospitals, and leading a team to ensure high-quality care. Candidates should have a degree in Physiotherapy and strong communication skills. This is a rewarding position with opportunities for professional development.

Benefits

Regular CPD opportunities

Potential for Advanced Clinical Practitioner credentialing

Qualifications

• Experience in community physiotherapy.
• Understanding of complex patient care.
• Ability to work under pressure and in home environments.

Responsibilities

• Provide urgent physiotherapy assessments in patients' homes.
• Support timely discharges from acute hospitals.
• Supervise junior staff and participate in service development.

Skills

Autonomous working

Excellent communication

Clinical decision-making

Education

Degree in Physiotherapy

Job description

Overview

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Job summary

We are seeking a motivated and highly skilled Senior Physiotherapist to work within the Rapid Access Services (RAS); a 7-day community service. This comprises of three pathways: 'Urgent Community Response', 'Discharge to Assess', and the 'Virtual Ward'. You will also be involved in leading the therapy 'Urgent Response' pathway for non-injured fallers.

This is a challenging and highly rewarding role within a fast-paced, ever evolving primary care team. The role will enable you to develop your skills in the holistic assessment and treatment of complex, frail patients. This will include knowledge of medications and their impact on function; being competent in taking observations and completing NEWS2 scores to identify deteriorating patients; being exposed to an array of medical and long-term conditions in people over the age of 18; identifying the need for a medical review as part of diagnostics, and being competent in liaising directly with the appropriate specialist community teams to ensure seamless care.

Experience of working autonomously is essential, as our team is often faced with challenging situations which present themselves in the home environment. As a Senior Physiotherapist, you will be working as part of an accomplished team to provide high quality, evidence-based interventions, whilst providing clinical support and having oversight of junior members of the team.

Main duties of the job

The main Physiotherapy role as part of the Discharge To Assess (D2A) and Geriatrician led Virtual Ward (VW) pathway, is to support timely discharges from acute hospitals. These are variable in complexity, consisting of simple risk assessments for those below their usual functional ability, but also for those whereby it is crucial they have an immediate same day assessment in their own home environment to ensure their safety and optimal function upon discharge.

Within the Urgent Community Response (UCR) pathway, the key is to provide an urgent physiotherapy assessment, treatment and intervention in patient's homes to prevent hospital admissions. This can also consist of supporting same day discharges from A&E. Within the role, you will be expected to provide complex assessments and interventions and will make high impact clinical decisions whilst sharing a caseload due to the 7-day working pattern.

The cohort of patients within RAS are regularly of a high acuity and have a variety of conditions, such as delirium, exacerbations of COPD, TLSO and C-Spine braces, non-weight bearing upper or lower limbs, and falls. Within this setting there is a key focus on identifying deteriorating patients, and escalating appropriately through joint working with Nurses, Paramedics and/or Geriatrician as required. There may be many barriers to treatment in the community, requiring complex problem solving and working with other external agencies to enable to the best outcome for these patients.

About us

Regular CPD sessions and in-services are held, along with training opportunities identified from yearly appraisal. Within the Rapid Access Service, therapists can be upskilled in venepuncture and use of a diagnostic Istat machine to support clinical decision making in line with the MDT. Within CNWL, there is also potential to work towards credentialing as an Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP). Upon completion of this, the Senior physiotherapist will be able to use an array of advanced assessments, treatments, diagnostics and prescribing to allow for clinical excellence in the care of our patients.

Within Camden Rapid Access Service, we are proud of our high staff retention rate, and have played a significant part in the upskilling and development of many clinicians within the team.

As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working in healthcare settings.

Job description

Job responsibilities

As a senior member of the Rapid Access Service, you will be expected to be a highly skilled Physiotherapist who is approachable, an excellent communicator, and who is flexible and able to adapt to the needs of both patients and service.

As part of your role you will also have the opportunity to be Clinician of The Day (COD). This consists of screening all referrals for all pathways. This is a key leadership role in which the COD is required to challenge where necessary the appropriateness of referrals, and ensure all the relevant information is gained to ensure safety for all parties. The COD coordinates and oversees the therapist’s caseload on that given day, and allocates new referrals as they are discharged from hospital. This is a balancing skill in order to ensure the team have capacity and the discharge is well coordinated in line with the integrated discharge teams.

There is much scope for development of both clinical and non-clinical duties within this role. As a Senior Physiotherapist you will have the opportunity to develop leadership skills through undertaking CNWL's 21st Century Leadership modules, as well as non-clinical duties to support the Therapy Lead. You will also be encouraged to identify and undertake service development projects, and supervise junior staff and students. As a leader you will have the opportunity to develop skills in managing people, and identifying and participating in service development through supervisory roles and QI projects.

The 7-day working shift patterns are a mix of the following: 9am-5pm, 2pm-10pm or 9am-10pm.