Consultant in Palliative Care - (Community and Hospice)

The successful candidate will be a permanent Consultant in Palliative Medicine working across the Community Specialist Palliative Care Team (CSPCT) within Cheshire and Wirral Partnership (CWP) and Hospice of the Good Shepherd (HGS). This an exciting opportunity to facilitate and enhance the care of patients with life-limiting illness across West Cheshire - providing specialist advice and input in hospital and community settings and leading further service development and research.

The postholder will collaborate closely with existing consultants within the collaborative service, providing specialist palliative medical skills for patients and leadership to a wider team of clinicians tasked with the delivery of responsive, effective, coordinated, compassionate, person-centered palliative care., The successful applicant for this appointment will be in an exciting position to enhance and facilitate the care of the terminally ill across the locality and to act as a focus for advice, generalist contact in community and hospice settings and further development and research locally.

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides services to West Cheshire and to Welsh patients covered by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. The Trust works collaboratively within the wider Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership. Its services are provided from three locations:

o The Countess of Chester Hospital: providing 438 general and acute beds.o Ellesmere Port Hospital: providing 56 beds as a rehabilitation, intermediate and outpatient facility.o Tarporley War Memorial Hospital: a base for community services which serve the local rural population.

The Trust employs over 6258 staff (headcount) which includes temporary bank staff and provides acute emergency and elective services, primary care direct access services and obstetric services to a population of approximately 407,000. This includes 357,000 residents in Chester and West Cheshire which includes Ellesmere Port and Neston as well as the Deeside area of Flintshire which has a population of approximately 50,000.

The Trust is a busy district general hospital and in 2022/2023, there were more than 503,342 patient attendances (inpatient, outpatient and diagnostic) ranging from a simple outpatient appointment to major cancer surgery. This is an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to the previous year when there were 494,387 patient attendances.