Consultant Cardiologist - ref. a5109503

apartmentNorthumbria Healthcare - NHCT Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust placeCramlington calendar_month 
Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work for an organisation that was voted the best acute and combined acute and community trust in the country, based on the experience of its staff (NHS Staff Survey 2022).
Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep.

Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare and, this is…the Northumbria Way!

What the Northumbria Way means for you:

  • Extensive staff health and well-being programme including access to our specialist Wellbeing Hub
  • Support and connection through a variety of Staff Network groups
  • A range of flexible working opportunities
  • Generous annual leave and pension scheme
  • Access to lease car and home electronics scheme (qualifying criteria applies)
  • Opportunities to improve your professional development through our vast training programmes
  • On-site nursery places via salary sacrifice
  • Access to savings scheme via salary sacrifice with Northumberland Community Bank
We are proud to be one of the country’s top performing NHS trusts – rated ‘outstanding’ overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We provide a range of health and care services to support more than 500,000 people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside across the largest geographical area of any NHS Trust in England.

Our teams deliver care from hospitals, a range of community venues and people’s homes. Our hospitals include a specialist emergency care hospital (the first of its kind in England), three general hospitals and community hospitals. In the community we deliver a wide range of community and public health services.

We lead in innovation and quality, having opened the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently launched our Community Promise – a pledge to make a real impact not just in healthcare but on the wider factors that affect people’s lives, such as education, employment and the economy.

If Northumbria Healthcare sounds like somewhere you could belong we would love to hear from you. Visit our website to catch up on our latest news.

Whilst Northumbria Healthcare are a highly innovative organisation, the use of Third Party Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a risk to the integrity of our Recruitment & Selection processes. If you use AI, and it poses a risk to the integrity your individual recruitment process, we may withdraw your application at any stage of the process.

Job overview

NHCT is seeking to appoint a Cardiologist with subspecialty interest in Heart Failure and Complex Devices.

The Heart Failure service has piloted the administration of subcutaneous furosemide at home to those with heart failure in the palliative phase with the aim of relieving congestion, improving symptoms and preventing readmission. Data from this very successful pilot has been presented at international Cardiology meetings; and resulted in the successful award of an Innovation in Heart Failure grant from the British Heart Foundation to role this programme out more widely.
There is a dedicated Heart Failure Virtual Ward, in line with national recommendations, delivering IV diuretics at home and facilitating the intravenous to oral stepdown of diuretics for those with decompensated heart failure. This is run by three of the heart failure interested Consultants and supported by the Heart Failure specialist nursing team and dedicated virtual ward staff.

Lastly, the trust has aspirations to open an innovative dedicated Acute Heart Failure Unit on the NSECH site to ensure the consistent delivery of high-quality specialist care for patients with a primary diagnosis of heart failure.

This unit aims to reduce length of stay and readmission rates and will feed directly into the Virtual Ward and successful programme of delivering subcutaneous furosemide in the community. This post will contribute to delivering and expanding the heart failure service.

Main duties of the job

To help deliver and expand the Complex Device To help develop the Heart Failure Service focusing on aiding the creation of the Acute Heart Failure Unit at NSECH and instituting more widespread use of subcutaneous diuretics in the community. The Full-time working week will consist of 10 Programmed Activities (PA’s), separated into: Direct Clinical Care: Ward/On Call/Outpatient clinics Supporting Professional Activities Working for your organisation NHCT is one of the UKs most dynamic, innovative and progressive Foundation Trusts.

Northumbria has been in the top five national trusts for outpatient performance on the national surveys, and has been awarded the HSJ award for Provider Trust of the Year in 2013. T

he trust has been named “Best place to work in 2015” at the National Patient Safety Congress and awards Ceremony. Financially, NHCT has achieved extremely strong performance despite the increasing pressure on budgets, in contrast to many other Foundation trusts.

There is a deep culture of governance embedded in the trust which includes rolling programmes for review of all deaths within the trust to identify learning points.

The trust mortality reviews suggest that our care remains well above national average in avoidance of patient harm, and there is a deep commitment to patient safety and the avoidance of harm, which has been recognised nationally - NHCT has been one of the top forty trusts for six consecutive years as defined by the CHKS.

Working for our organisation

We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, covering one of the largest geographical areas of any NHS trust in the country.
Leading in innovation and quality – opening a state of the art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients?
You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare, this is the Northumbria Way!

Please read ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Full-time working week will consist of 10 Programmed Activities (PA’s), separated into: Direct Clinical Care: Supporting Professional Activities: Activity Frequency PA’s Ward rounds Rotational basis 0.5 NSECH on call 1:10 3.6 Elective work as dictated by skills and service need Based on SLA 2.5 Clinical Admin Flexible 1.4 Supporting Professional Activities Flexible 2.0 TOTAL 10 Direct clinical care 8.0 programmed activities (DCC) Supporting professional activities 2.0 (SPA).

NHCT was the first DGH service to develop standard bradycardia pacing in the early 1990s and has an excellent record in this field. We have been one of the highest volume implanting centres in the North East for bradycardia pacemaker implantation and have comfortably met British Heart Rhythm Society standards for complex device implantation numbers for the last 10 years.

Since the beginning of 2022, we have also provided a complex device implantation and follow-up service for Cumbria. Device implantation takes place in a Cath Lab at the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSECH) facilitating prompt in-patient pacing.

All new device implants (bradycardia and complex devices) are enrolled in remote monitoring at implant. There is a dedicated weekly Consultant-delivered complex device trouble-shooting clinic. The Heart Failure Service is driven by a team of six interested Consultants supporting the wider Consultant body and a team of 6.6 WTE Heart Failure Specialist Nurses in secondary care running dedicated nurse-led four pillar initiation and titration clinics and providing an in-reach service at NSECH.

In addition, there are 5 WTE Heart Failure Specialist Nurses working in the community.

Person specification

Education & Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • MRCP
  • Fully registered on the UK General Medical Council's Specialist Register or Specialist Registrars may apply if within 6 months of CCT at date of interview
  • CCT in cardiology
  • Full GMC Registration.
Desirable criteria
  • Postgraduate degree
  • Formal Educational Qualification

Experience & Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • Clinical training and experience in the relevant speciality, equivalent to that required to gain entry to the UK Certificate of Completed Training (CCT)
  • High standard of clinical skill and expertise in speciality
  • Clinical Governance
  • Expertise in sub specialty.
  • Experience of and commitment to teaching undergraduate and postgraduate medical staff.
  • Experience of and commitment to medical audit.
Desirable criteria
  • Experience of audit and management

Applicants who are members of the Armed Forces, and those who have a disability that requires support in the work place (two ticks pledge) and who meet the essential criteria will be interviewed under the Trust's interview guarantee scheme.

We recognise the positive value of diversity and inclusion and are committed to a workforce that is diverse, equal and inclusive. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME people are currently under-represented in our workforce as well as other under-represented groups such as LGBT+ and disabled candidates.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, we have a Gold award from the Defense Recognition Scheme, and we are delighted to support Apprenticeships, Age Posi+ive and are a mindful employer.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to attend interview please make the recruitment team aware as soon as possible by calling our HR Recruitment Team on 0191 203 1415 option 2.

Applicants who meet the Fit and Proper Person Requirements (FPPR) will require additional pre-employment checks in line with CQC and NHS England statutory guidance.

Make sure to read the ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application and make sure you know everything there is to know before joining our fantastic trust!

Please note that it is a requirement of this Trust that all successful applicants pay for their own DBS certification if a DBS check is required for the post. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first monthly pay.

apartmentNHS JobsplaceCramlington
in a Cath Lab at the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSECH) facilitating prompt in-patient pacing. All new device implants (bradycardia and complex devices) are enrolled in remote monitoring at implant. There is a dedicated weekly Consultant...
apartmentWSPplaceNewcastle upon Tyne, 5 mi from Cramlington
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apartmentNorthumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation TrustplaceCramlington
stepdown of diuretics for those with decompensated heart failure. This is run by three of the heart failure interested Consultants and supported by the Heart Failure specialist nursing team and dedicated virtual ward staff. Lastly, the trust has aspirations...