Specialist Occupational Therapist Palliative Care

The Hospital Palliative Care Team is a multi-disciplinary team providing palliative care advice and support to inpatients across all sites of the Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust. The occupational therapists work mainly from the John Radcliffe site The therapy input into the palliative care service has two main aims:

• to support AHP colleagues with discharges that are complex because of the palliative care needs of the patient
• to facilitate rapid discharge for patients who have a likely prognosis of less than two weeks and whose preference has been for care at home. This is a component of our flagship end of life project: Rapid Intervention in Palliative and End of Life care. This has been running for the last 30 months with significant impact on patient outcomes and savings of hospital bed days at the end of life.
Although this OT role is based within the hospital, the therapists are expected to follow up patients after discharge and some community working (across Oxfordshire and South Northamptonshire) will be required. A full driving license, with access to a car for work purposes is essential. The palliative care team is gradually working towards a 7-day service across all areas. Weekend and extended hours working will be expected. The hospital team therapists will also be required to cross cover for the palliative care specialist OTs across the whole service if required.,
• Performs holistic assessment of patients including those with complex presentations, and from this formulates a treatment plan, which is carried out as an autonomous practitioner.
• Maintain a clinical caseload of complex patients as an autonomous practitioner.
• Communication and collaboration with others involved in the care of patients, and non clinical activity.
• Work as part of the MDT with patients known to the Hospital Palliative Care Team
• Participates in the supervision, teaching and appraisal of junior / student Occupational Therapists and Therapy Assistants.
• Participate in maintaining and improving all aspects of evidence based practice and quality assurance, this may involve change management.
• Contribute to services development, clinical governance, audit, research and continuing professional development., Work within their scope of practice within the specialist service and practice autonomously as well as within the multi-disciplinary specialist palliative care team.
• Initiate and co-ordinate the assessment, planning, delivery and evaluation of the holistic needs of patients and families, to optimise health and wellbeing, following agreed policies, protocols and guidelines.
• To provide specialist care and use range of knowledge in complex decision making to determine evidence-based recommendations and therapeutic interventions to promote a high standard of Occupational Therapy practice.
• Plan, prioritise and manage complete episodes of care, working in partnership with others, delegating and referring as appropriate to optimise health outcomes and resource use, providing direct support to patients and clients.
• Use professional judgement in managing complex and unpredictable care events.
• Draw upon an appropriate range of multi-agency and inter-professional resources in their practice.
• Appropriately define boundaries in practice in collaboration with Senior Specialist OT
• Practice a high standard of communication including highly sensitive and complex information to develop and sustain partnership working with individuals, groups, communities and agencies. Utilise evidence based information through a variety of communication media.
• Maintain adequate patient documentation for all patients seen and advice given in any practice setting and contribute to clinical activity/data collection as required.
  
  Degree in Occupational Therapy.
• State Registration Health and Care Professions Council
Desirable criteria
• Relevant Postgraduate training, Previous experience of end of life care
• Experience of supervision of staff and students
• Experience of Service/ Practice innovation.
• Experience of complex assessment, treatment and discharge planning.
• Experience of mentoring and supporting other staff
• Experience of contributing to audit and research.
Desirable criteria
• Previous experience working in a Palliative Care setting.
• Previous experience working in the community setting.
• Membership of speciality groups, offers a willingness to work flexibly.
• Articulates good personal organisational and time management skills.
• Demonstrates a proactive, problem solving approach.
• Demonstrates a commitment to life long learning.
• Demonstrates an understanding of the impact of an emotionally challenging area of work
• Demonstrates a resilient approach and the understanding of how to support this in others., A full driving license and access to car for work purposes, You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
  
  Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest NHS teaching trusts in the country. It provides a wide range of general and specialist clinical services and is a base for medical education, training and research.
The Trust comprises of four hospitals - the John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Headington and the Horton General Hospital in Banbury. Our values, standards and behaviours define the quality of clinical care we offer and the professional relationships we make with our patients, colleagues and the wider community. We call this Delivering Compassionate Excellence and its focus is on our values of compassion, respect, learning, delivery, improvement and excellence. These values put patients at the heart of what we do and underpin the quality healthcare we would like for ourselves or a member of our family. Watch how we set out to deliver compassionate excellence via the OUH YouTube channel.