Clinical Specialist Paediatric Occupational Therapist - NICU and ODN
A Vacancy at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.
This is an exciting role for a Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist to help develop and deliver the Neonatal Occupational Therapy Service at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and work as a Lead Allied Health Professional in the Neonatal Operational Delivery Network.
The post holder will work to implement the recommendations of the National Neonatal
Critical Care Review (NCCR) and the NHS Long Term Plan (2019), to improve access to skilled OTs on all neonatal units within the network. They will support providers to achieve equitable access to and provision of, highly complex knowledge and skills, to new born preterm and term infants.
To develop and deliver care on the level 3 NICU at ELCH. The unit is divided into three areas:- Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) – provides support for babies with breathing problems and other specialist treatment needs
- High Dependency Unit (HDU) – provides support for babies who require less intensive care than babies in NICU, but are still not stable enough for care in the SCBU
- Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) – provides support for babies who need tube feeding, additional oxygen support and light therapy (phototherapy).
The unit provides 24-hour specialist care for premature and sick infants who are born in south east London and southern England.
In addition to medical care for problems such as extreme prematurity, breathing difficulties and infection, they care for babies with neonatal surgical problems, heart conditions, brain, eye, airway, kidney and metabolic problems.
There are daily morning ward rounds led by the attending consultant, where parents can listen to discussions and be updated about their baby’s care. Quiet time each afternoon is an opportunity for parents to spend quality time with the baby, including partaking in kangaroo care.
There are 20 intensive care cots, 12 high dependency care cots and 14 special care cots.
You will be working closely with our AHP colleagues in Physiotherapy, Speech & Language Therapy, Dietetics and Psychology, as well as the wider MDT, to deliver a comprehensive Neonatal service.
You will need to be…- enthusiastic about developing the specialist and unique role of OT within neonates.
- able to demonstrate the value of occupational therapy for neonates, helping to establish OT as a key profession within the MDT
- experienced in working within neonatal care/paediatrics with knowledge of developmentally sensitive care
- able to work autonomously and provide specialist OT assessments and interventions to infants and their families
This post sits within the Paediatric occupational therapy service at Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
You will be responsible for the supervision and support of band 7 occupational therapists. You will contribute to service development alongside your colleagues in the neonatal service as well as the paediatric OT team.
You will be supervised by the clinical lead in paediatric occupational therapy and professionally managed by the Trust Head OT.
This post requires applicants to have excellent verbal and written communication skills, as collaborative working within the multi-disciplinary and with our community colleagues in health, education and social services is essential. It also requires an OT who has experience with working with this population of children, as you will need to be adaptable to meet the child’s individual therapy needs.You will need to be flexible in order to support the team within a busy hospital environment. You will be energetic, keen to critically appraise literature in the field of occupational therapy and deliver evidence-based practice as part of a service that encourages reflective practice.
There is the potential to participate in departmental audits or research projects. There is also the opportunity to increase your knowledge and skills through participation in team and hospital wide continuing professional development programmes, supervision of junior staff members and students, appraisal, in-service training and joint working.
See Job description and person Specification for further details or please contact us using the information below.
This advert closes on Wednesday 20 Nov 2024