Anaesthetics Consultant

Applications are invited for enthusiastic, motivated and committed individuals to join our friendly and dynamic team within the Critical Care department at Colchester Hospital, part of East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

**Summary of offer**: 10 PAs per week including core SPA of 1.5.

The Critical Care Unit at Colchester General was opened in 2004. It has 23 bed spaces including a 9 bedded separate unit but is funded to provide support for 7 level 3 and 8 level 2 patients. We have the ability to use the bed capacity flexibly depending on patient requirements. Critical care services at Colchester were rated ‘good’ by the CQC in 2017.

This is a replacement post. There are currently 10 consultants with dedicated sessions in critical care providing a separate on call rota. We have an established ‘block’ pattern of working to ensure continuity of care. The majority of the intensivists have anaesthetic sessions falling in their non ITU weeks based on a 10-week rolling job plan, scheduled around ITU commitments.

There are approximately 600 patients admitted to the critical care unit a year - about 60% are medical, with the remainder comprising 20% elective surgical patients and 20% emergency surgical patients. Surgical specialities on site are colorectal, vascular, urology, ENT, trauma and orthopaedics, gynaecology and obstetrics.

All standard critical care is provided - invasive and non-invasive ventilation, renal replacement therapy for up to eight patients, and high flow nasal oxygen therapy. Equipment is available to perform ultrasonography, echocardiography and cardiac output monitoring.

East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) provides hospital and community health care. We serve a wide geographical area with a population approaching 800,000 residents. We deliver care services from two main hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, six community hospitals, high street clinics and in patients’ own homes. We have nearly 10,000 staff, with an annual budget of over £650 million. We are the largest NHS organisation in the East Anglia.

We are building for better care with an exciting capital development programme across our sites - totalling £100million over the next five years.

We are building a new elective orthopaedic centre for ESNEFT at Colchester Hospital. It will be one of the biggest centres in the country and will ensure we can retain complex and low volume cases locally for the people we serve.

We are also now building a £7million specialist interventional radiology and cardiac angiography unit at Colchester.

At Ipswich we are investing £35million in a new Emergency Department and co-located Urgent Treatment Centre, with additional diagnostic imaging kit (MRI and CT). There’s a £5.3million molecular diagnostic laboratory soon to open at Ipswich, and works begins soon for a new Breast Care Centre and a Children’s Unit.

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The post-holder’s duties will be primarily at the Colchester General Hospital, but their presence may from time to time be required in other parts of the Trust.

**The key duties and responsibilities of the post will be**:

- Participate in the dedicated ICU on-call rota with other colleagues
- Provide day time cover for Critical Care and support the Outreach service
- Have a special interest in Critical Care Medicine
- Work flexibly to cover theatre sessions/allied specialties. Applicants without a CCT in Anaesthesia are welcome and efforts will be made to design an appropriate complimentary job plan reflecting their area of expertise.
- Take an active part in the supervision and management of junior medical staff, including formal teaching programmes and clinical audits
- Participate in appraisal and assessment of junior medical staff and undergraduates, and performance of clinical audit as delegated by the Unit Training Director
- To teach and train staff in other medical disciplines, nursing and support staff as appropriate
- To participate fully in the clinical incident reporting system

**The post-holder will**:

- Work with colleagues to provide a Consultant-led service with the highest standard of care
- Work with the multi-professional team to develop care pathways and clinical guidelines
- Develop and maintain good working practices
- Collaborate and promote close working links with colleagues, other departments and primary care
- Offer educational, clinical support and leadership to junior medical colleagues, nursing colleagues and other members of the multi-disciplinary team
- Ensure appropriate information is made available to staff to measure clinical performance and enable meaningful benchmarks to be established and evaluated within their area of responsibility
- Ensure there is a robust process for reviewing the quality of services provided, explaining the causes of success and failure and ensure the highest standards are maintained
- Provide a role model of professi