Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist in Critical Care

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Professional / Clinical responsibilities

§  To be professionally and legally responsible and accountable for all aspects of the practitioner’s professional activities.

§  To carry out assessment, analysis and formulation of best care programmes for a wide range of patients as an expert autonomous practitioner, including those with highly complex presentations and to use clinical reasoning skills, knowledge of evidence based practice and advanced rehabilitation expertise to determine appropriate care plan utilising highly specialist treatment skills and options.

§  To be responsible and accountable for own and department patient care plans, including discharge planning, and to provide consultation as an expert on physiotherapy within the specialist area with advice and guidance for junior and senior team members and other health care professionals both within and outside the Trust.

§  To co-ordinate intervention which may include other disciplines; advise and educate patient/carers/relatives/other health professionals

§  To manage clinical risk within own caseload at all times and ensure clinical risk is effectively managed across the specialist Physiotherapy service

§  To demonstrate physical ability to carry out physiotherapy assessment and interventions including manual therapy techniques and therapeutic handling.

§  To demonstrate highly developed dexterity, co-ordination and palpatory sensory skills for assessment and manual treatment of patients.

§  To be highly competent in assessing and managing a wide range of conditions within their own specialist area based on advanced theoretical knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology, often in situations where conflicting evidence is present

§  Able to interpret and analyse clinical and non-clinical facts, which may be conflicting, to form accurate diagnoses in the most highly complex types of conditions for patients in the designated area.

§  To use advanced theoretical and practical knowledge to refer to other health disciplines as appropriate and to ensure appropriate referral systems are used by departmental and other health professional staff.

§  To provide expert Physiotherapy input to the development of both Trust and National level initiatives within own specialist area.

Management and Leadership

§  To lead, in liaison with Therapy Lead in own specialist area and Associate Director, in policy and service development and implementation within their specialist Physiotherapy service and to ensure that quality standards and effectiveness of patient care are continually monitored and improved.

§  To manage, in liaison with the Therapy Lead for the speciality, the area’s team and workload [( inpatients and outpatients)] including staff appraisals, teaching. 

§  To ensure that the service responds to Trust, KHP and national initiatives and policy within the framework of clinical governance including clinical effectiveness, evidence-based healthcare, managing clinical risk and, research and development issues.

§  To assist the Therapy Lead in developing the role of the Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist, proposing extension of practice beyond traditional scope of practice

§  To be the Physiotherapy Lead [if appropriate] in liaison with the Therapy Lead in own area and Associate Director, ensuring Physiotherapy is integrated within the Trust and KHP initiatives and implementing, in liaison with the management team, appropriate developments.

§  To liaise and work with other Therapy Leads and Clinical Specialists to effectively support the specialist Physiotherapy services across trust sites.

§  To be responsible for protection, maintenance and repair of all equipment within the specialist Physiotherapy service and to ensure that designated staff attain competency prior to use

§  To provide clinical teaching and staff development of peers, medical colleagues and other health professionals within this clinical area, across the trust and outside the organisation. This may be to large groups and may include Consultants, GP’s and nurses

§  To assist the management team in the recruitment of staff as a clinical specialist panel member

§  To provide highly specialist clinical opinion, as required, in the development of clinical policy and service development within the physiotherapy department and related health specialities

§  To maintain service links with KHP, external NHS, voluntary and speciality related organisations to ensure seamless inpatient, outpatient and community based care

§  To ensure teams are user focused and patient views are incorporated into service planning.

Planning and organisation

§  To flexibly manage responsibility for the clinical caseload for own specialist Physiotherapy Team including own complex caseload, clinical education, departmental and external teaching, service development, and quality assurance, including research and audit.

§  To use excellent prioritising and time management skills to meet the unpredictable and conflicting needs of the service

Communication    

§  To demonstrate an ability to communicate complex, emotive and sensitive information to patients, carers and other staff, where there may be barriers to communication or may include information about long-term / permanent disabilities ensuring confidentiality at all times

§  To clearly convey complex knowledge of techniques, biomechanics, anatomy and physiology to patients and staff, where evidence underpinning practice may be conflicting and ensuring sensitivity to the audience’s level of understanding and prior knowledge

§  To be able to motivate and persuade others (including staff and patients) through advanced communication skills, with the benefit of verbal, non-verbal skills, using written and electronic information

§  To facilitate patients’ attitudinal change towards their condition thus encouraging health/function promoting behaviour

§  To articulate effectively the specialist physiotherapeutic perspective on a patient’s condition with medical colleagues and members of the multidisciplinary team, negotiating when various patient management options are available.

§  To diffuse potentially hostile and antagonistic situations with staff, patients and relatives, using highly developed negotiation and interpersonal skills

§  To use a wide variety of adult learning techniques to optimise clinical development

§  To represent the Rehab and Therapies Directorate within the Trust and to external agencies regularly, and on a district and national level occasionally

§  To resolve written and verbal complaints and to be well versed with the Trusts’ formal complaints procedure within specialist area, in conjunction with the Rehabilitation and Therapies Leadership Team

§  To promote the role of Physiotherapy in own specialty within the Trust, local communities and nationally.

§  To cascade corporate strategic ideas and information to all staff within designated area, whilst being sensitive to their levels of understanding and prior knowledge

Information Management

§  To be responsible for maintenance of accurate records including appropriate electronic systems and supervision of departmental record keeping; to include comprehensive progress and discharge reports to medical referrers and legal and disability reports

§  To identify appropriate outcome measures and service impact measures which accurately evaluate patient response and service development needs

§  To maintain accurate statistical information on specialist area using databases as necessary to inform management team and drive audit agenda

Education and Professional Development.

§  To present service development/research regularly at local and occasionally national level.

§  To maintain a CPD portfolio reflecting personal professional development and ensure members within the specialty Physiotherapy team have a comprehensive performance plan

§  To ensure the Physiotherapy special service has a comprehensive annual audit programme based on the Trust’s corporate objectives and to report all research and audit activities to senior management within Trust guidelines.

§  To keep abreast of physiotherapy evidenced based practice by use of relevant reading, attendance at in-service training, external courses and database searches.

§  To develop local departmental standards based on a good working knowledge of National standards where they exist and on best evidence and to ensure these standards are monitored and adhered to by all members of own Physiotherapy specialty team and other Physiotherapy staff as appropriate.

§  To influence the National agenda in the development of standards and guidance in own specialist Physiotherapy service.

§  To promote a research environment within the specialist Physiotherapy team and offer support and guidance to research teams, MSc projects and external agencies using Trust property and patients and to identify sources of research funding where appropriate

As part of the Rehab and Therapies Directorates commitment to meeting patient needs and delivering excellence physiotherapy services are provided 7 days a week. It is therefore essential the post holder be able to work their hours flexibly and contribute fully to both existing and new rota’s.