Consultant Medical Microbiologist

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical:

• Clinical: The Microbiology / Virology Department is very clinically orientated and the duties of the post include regular ward visits including visits to ITUs, review of consults and patients with chronic or complicated infections, daily clinical meetings, attendance at ward rounds and relevant MDTs and telephone consultations. This also involves development of the clinical service, protocols and guideline
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• Antimicrobial Stewardship: The post holder will help to further develop antimicrobial stewardship and improve and further implement audits within the Trust, working with the well-established pharmacists and IT teams.

• Laboratory: Duties in the laboratory include bench rounds (physical or virtual via ‘TEAMS’ if based at the RVI site), providing day-to-day supervision of diagnostic methods and examination of specimens, authorisation and interpretation of results and attendance at laboratory meetings. This also includes training the junior medical and laboratory staff, and participation in development of laboratory protocols and procedures. Duties also involve participation in business planning and helping the laboratory to maintain full accreditation with UKAS.

• Infection prevention and control: The Trust is committed to minimising risks of healthcare associated infection to patients, visitors and staff. All employees are required to be familiar with and comply with Infection Prevention and Control Policies (IPC) relevant to their area of work and must participate in IPC training and activities commensurate to their role. IPC duties include providing advice relating to day-to-day IPC issues, meeting with Infection Prevention and Control staff, attending or chairing infection meetings including outbreak meetings and Root Cause Analysis as appropriate and IPC Committee meetings/forums.

• This time allocation of tasks may vary, depending on agreed assignment of other duties.

Cross-Cover for Clinical Duties with Colleagues: 

• You will be expected to provide cross-cover for your colleagues during periods of leave and short term sickness absence.

• Study Leave: There is an entitlement of up to 10 days paid study leave (including off-duty days falling within the period of leave) per annum, subject to Trust approval. Funding for study leave is subject to available resource and applications will be evaluated according to criteria outlined in the Trust study leave policy. Final approval for funding will be undertaken by the Trust Education and Workforce Development Team in conjunction with the relevant Head of Service or Clinical Director. 

On-call: 

• Trainees are mostly first on-call for microbiology queries, supervised by consultants for weekday evening shifts and weekends after 12 noon. This work is mainly delivered by telephone. Consultants are required to be first on call, on some weekends where there are gaps in rota and also all weeknights from 10 pm till 9 am of next morning. There is an arrangement to cross-cover a neighbouring Trust for on-call (Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust), however an on- site presence at Northumbria is not required.

• The appointee will participate in the Consultant on-call and the microbiology transplant rota (for the provision of out-of-hours advice related to infection in transplantation).

• Acute Laboratory cover for Saturdays and Sundays and Bank Holidays 9-12 Medical cover is also required and can be on site or from home since TEAMS working has been acceptable Post Covid. This acute lab work requires 1 trainee and 1 Consultant to cover one site each (Royal Victoria Infirmary and Freeman Hospital) and complete all proactive work of new results and infection cases and handovers and follow up of patients on wards and ITUs. Time off in lieu will be given for Bank Holiday and weekend working by mutually convenient arrangement (department and the individuals) and is currently 1 Day in TOIL per weekend/BH worked . On-call will be 1 in 13 as a joint on-call rota with Northumberland Consultants, and a 1 in 7.5 transplant on-call ( Recent diary of activity in 2022 led to a tally of each Cons doing a weekend in 5.2 weekends)  responsibility and it attracts a Category A on call supplement.

As the departments of Microbiology/Virology and Infectious Diseases integrate more closely over time there may be opportunities to participate in the Infectious Disease on call rota, depending on clinical experience.

Supporting Professional Activities (SPA):

The time that is devoted to SPA within the Job Plan will be likely to vary at different times in a Consultant’s career. The Trust believes that full time Consultants require 6 hours per week, on average, (1.5 PAs) to undertake the core activities common to everyone within SPA, such as undertaking CPD, mandatory training, appraisal (separate SPA time is not identified by the Trust formally for appraisal preparation) and revalidation, attendance at department management and audit meetings and other appropriate meetings such as the Antimicrobial Steering Group, and Infection Prevention and Control Committee, basic trainee supervision etc.  Additional SPA time is recognised for further activity with a measurable output, which might include regular teaching, training supervision, department management or audit lead. This will be agreed through the regular Job Plan review mechanism, usually up to the maximum of 2.5 SPAs.

Administrative: 

• The appointee will contribute to management within the Trust via the Directorate structure, including active membership of relevant committees such as the Infection Prevention and Control Committee and Consultants’ meeting.

Research: 

• Involvement in research and development, including collaboration with clinical colleagues in approved research projects is actively encouraged. The department holds a strong Research portfolio and several projects ongoing with the support of North East Innovatation Lab( NEIL)

Teaching:                  

• The duties of the role include: The supervision and training of junior medical staff in Combined Infection Training, Medical Microbiology, Virology and Infectious Diseases
• Teaching undergraduate medical students, postgraduates and others including Biomedical Scientists, nursing staff and the professions allied to medicine.
• Where appropriate an application may be made for the appointee to be granted the title of Associate Clinical Lecturer in Microbiology. 

Facilities: 

• Secretarial support, office accommodation and a PC will be provided at the base hospital. If required, a hot desk facility will be provided at the other main hospital site if the agreed job plan includes regular cross-site commitments.

Flexibility: 

In line with the Trust’s core value of placing patients at the heart of everything we do, we are developing our service provision to be responsive to the needs of our patients. To meet those needs some staff groups will be increasingly asked to work a more flexible work pattern so that they can offer services in the evening or weekend.  As a result any offer of employment to a consultant post will be subject to you agreeing to work a new more flexible pattern or working in the future if required, including evening and weekend work.