Urgent Care Practitioner - Clinical Assessment Service

Urgent Care Practitioner - Clinical Assessment Service

Lincolnshire Community Health Service NHS Trust

The Clinical Assessment Service is an award winning service that is a key part of the integrated urgent care system for Lincolnshire by providing virtual assessment of patients via the telephone and video consultations.

Due to recent internal promotion, an exciting opportunity for new team members has arisen.

The successful post holder will be responsible for the telephone assessment of health and clinical needs by utilising their professional clinical judgement.

The role will be based at Beech House in Lincoln. The service runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Our busiest times are out of hours. There is a requirement to work a variety of shifts to cover the 24 hour period and this includes weekend work. Full time workers will be expected to work 2.5 weekends per month as the service is at is busiest during the out of hour period.

There will also be an expectation to support other services with urgent care as required, such as urgent treatment centres.

They will provide assessment, medication advice and health information supporting individuals to access the appropriate level of care including advice to manage their symptoms at home.

This post is likely to commence from April 2025

Main duties of the job

Provide skilled and effective assessment of patients presenting clinical need, through telephone consultation, using professional clinical judgement and evidenced based practice.

Utilise advanced listening, probing and facilitative skills across a diverse range of telephone calls.

Provide accurate advice and health information to patients via the telephone in order to empower them to act upon the advice given.

Examples of calls that the post holder will be assessing via the telephone are;

• Pain
• Skin rashes
• Toxic ingestions
• Gastrointestinal presentations such as diarrhoea and vomiting
• Altered behaviour
• Fever
• Ear, nose and throat presentations such as tonsillitis

Facilitate clear patient pathways through primary, community, urgent and secondary care.

Provide leadership in your of responsibility by providing clinical leadership and motivating and supporting colleagues to maintain and improve their performance.

About us

Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust is in the top 25 per cent of all community trusts for overall staff engagement in the 2021 NHS National Staff Survey.

At LCHS, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in LCHS' workforce.

LCHS recognises the increasing demand for more flexibility in working practices in order to accommodate the personal goals and commitments that employees experience at different stages during their working lives. Flexible working opportunities such as part-time working, compressed hours, job shares, and hybrid working models can help staff to balance their personal and work commitments. Arrangements can be put in place if it can be shown that the needs of the individual can be balanced with those of the service and the impact on other team members, enabling the Trust to recruit and retain skilled staff, raise staff morale, reduce absenteeism and respond to changing service needs more effectively.

We are an ambassador of a learning culture that will support the right individual to progress in their chosen career through an 'earn while you learn' apprenticeship programme. Visit our Learning and Development page to find out more https://www.lincolnshirecommunityhealthservices.nhs.uk/join-us/learning-and-dev

Job responsibilities

Please refer to the attached Job description.

This a generic job description for all urgent care practitioners across various sites within urgent care and does talk about face to face assessments.

The role that you are applying for within the clinical assessment service is assessment over the telephone or via video consultation.

Experience of telephone assessment is not essential as full induction and training will be provided.

If you have any questions please contact the Clinical Team Leader for the Clinical Assessment Service.

Person Specification

Essential and desirable

• Registered health care professional with existing registration - first level nurse/paramedic
• Educated to degree level or equivalent
• Substantial consolidated experience of clinical practice in a range of settings
• Experience of working in a variety of primary or urgent care setting
• Supervision/mentoring experience
• Experience of urgent or emergency care
• Previous experience working via remote consultation/use of system one
• Ability to demonstrate a working knowledge of the clinical governance agenda

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Lincolnshire Community Health Service NHS Trust