Stroke Consultant

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is seeking to appoint a Consultant in Stroke Medicine (on a full-time or part-time basis) to its award-winning Stroke Service. This is a new post to join a team of 8 existing consultants with varying clinical input into stroke.

The post-holder will participate in the provision of hyper acute stroke care at the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSECH) and the sub-acute / rehabilitation stroke care and neurovascular clinics on the base sites at North Tyneside General Hospital, Wansbeck General Hospital, and Hexham General Hospital. They will work with members of the multi-disciplinary team to provide high quality care. Other duties will be negotiated depending on the post holders parent specialty.

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is committed to assisting all employees to achieve a work-life balance, regardless of their personal circumstances. Any applicant who is unable, for personal reasons, to work full-time, will be eligible to be considered for the post. If such a person is appointed, modification of the job content will be discussed on a personal basis in consultation with consultant colleagues.

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, in addition to our state-of-the-art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. We also care for people in their homes and provide services from facilities in local communities such as health centres. We give people greater choice and control over their care to help them to live independently at home and avoid hospital admission where appropriate. High quality patient care is at the heart of everything we do and we strive to ensure every single patient and service user has an exceptional experience with us. We have one of the most extensive patient experience programmes of any trust in England.

A typical week would consist of 10 Programmed Activities (PA’s), including a minimum allocation of 1.5 SPA’s for Supporting Professional Activities. Additional SPA’s will be available dependent upon service need as required. There are additional PA’s available for Education and Clinical supervision with 0.25 for first trainee and 0.125 for each subsequent trainee thereafter.

This post is new and will expand the number of consultants in the Trust working in some capacity in Stroke Medicine to nine. Stroke Nurse Practitioners work at NSECH, supporting assessment and treatment of
patients with proven and suspected stroke throughout the hospital. Some have dedicated stroke research roles. They are the first point of contact for emergency stroke and high-risk TIA referrals. They play a crucial role in identifying stroke patients, arranging appropriate investigations and liaising with the stroke physicians. They also operate a successful telephone triage system for TIA referrals, allowing timely investigation and assessment.

The service enjoys excellent relationships with Radiology in the Trust and Vascular Surgery and Neurosciences provided by the neighbouring Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Trust.

to treatment and transfer to the regional neuroscience centre in Newcastle.

Stroke Northumbria has a long and successful history of multidisciplinary service development, led by the Stroke Executive Group. The Stroke Northumbria Network is a broader multidisciplinary group which meets to discuss implementation of strategy, setting up Acute or Rehabilitation Stroke Groups depending on the focus of service development at the time.

The service is very active in research with an extensive portfolio of acute,
rehabilitation and secondary prevention studies managed by the Clinical Research.