Job description

The acute hospitals Speech and Language Therapy service at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust is excited to have the opportunity to recruit another band 6 developing specialist into our service. This is at a time of considerable and exciting change as the trust works towards its move to the state of the art Midland Metropolitan University Hospital in 2022.

Our Speech and Language Therapy team, currently based across Sandwell and City hospital sites, are a welcoming and aspirational group of therapists with a clear vision and strong commitment to improving the lives of local people. We have a strong focus upon delivering patient-centred care and embedding ‘what matters to you’ care principles into all of our work. We also place equal emphasis upon caring for each other and are proud to work within a trust that champions the health and well-being of its staff.

We are looking for an individual who is able to work independently with a range of communication and swallowing presentations across our inpatient wards and can use highly developed interpersonal skills to establish strong relationships with a range of individuals and MDTs.

Our team is committed to staff training and development and would be seeking a candidate who is motivated to support us in mentoring and developing both SLT rotational staff and other support staff within the service as well as help us to grow our student placement provision and education offer.

Our service is committed to exploring and developing 7 day services and post holders are required to engage in new future models of working as we progress to Midland Metropolitan University hospital.

You will be required to:
To independently assess, diagnose and manage a range of disorders of
communication and swallowing as part of the medical and surgical inpatient, acute SLT service.

To work independently with patients with often sensitive and complex presentations, whose behaviour may challenge (so as to cause harm to self and others), actively seeking support and supervision as required.

If the service requires, subject to requisite period of clinical training and competency development, to learn to undertake instrumental assessment procedures such as; endoscopic examination of swallowing (FEES) or videofluoroscopy(VFS).

The Acute Speech and Language Therapy Department is a team based across Sandwell and West Birmingham hospitals. We link closely with our adult community Speech and Language Therapy colleagues and have recently developed rotational positions moving between the services to further strengthen our integration.

We have regular departmental meetings and clinical supervision sessions. Continuing professional development is very well supported with dedicated time given weekly for individual progression and monthly team evidence based practice teaching and reflection sesssions.

The department champions and supports student training across the full range of placements and is seeking to expand its offer to student education as we move forwards.

There is excellent administrative support, good IT facilities and access to modern trust library facilities.

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS trust is located near major road and rail networks with easy access to Birmingham. There are a wide range of leisure facilities locally.

For further details of the job role and responsibilities please review the attached job description and person specification for the post.

If this sounds like an opportunity that interests you, I would strongly encourage and invite candidates to call and discuss the post further in confidence.

Please contact:
Lucy Wood ontel: 07970993641 or [email protected]