Job Description

Contract - Permanent - 37.5 hours per week



This is an exciting opportunity to join our integrated in-patient Therapy Team at the Whittington Hospital. Therapy Assistants provide essential support to the Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists to ensure we can provide timely, safe and compassionate care to our patients.



The post holder will have the opportunity to rotate across all the work teams to gain the skills, knowledge and experience unique to each setting. You will assist patients to recover and regain their function whilst in the hospital. You will work with members of the wider multi-disciplinary team and community providers towards achieving a safe discharge ensuring the appropriate support is in place for each patient. The Candidates must be IT literate, well organized and ideally have recent previous experience of working with people or in a customer facing role. Previous NHS experience and qualifications in a therapy or healthcare related subject would be desirable.



Please see the and the Persons Specification for further details about the job role. If you are unable to access the PDF, the details of the job description can also be found in the 'Detailed and Main responsibilities' section.



Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.



To be responsible for a caseload of patients working to agreed treatment objectives and to assist qualified therapy staff in the treatment of patients who require more than one therapist for safe handling, complex rehabilitation



Clinical - General



To be responsible for implementing prescribed treatment programmes with an allocated patient caseload through competency based assessment and within agreed scope of practice. This would follow on from an initial screening by a qualified Occupational Therapist / Physiotherapist.



Orthopaedic weekend rota



This is to treat post-operative patients and orthopaedic patients who may deteriorate without treatment over the weekend and this work will be completed under the guidance of a qualified physiotherapist.



START Team weekend rota



This is to assess and treat patients who may be able to go home from A&E or the acute assessment units. This work will be completed under the guidance of a qualified occupational therapist.

General clinical duties will include:

Gathering demographic and medical data to inform assessment.



Supervising and progressing exercise/mobility programmes for referred patients, which may include some who have complex needs



Gait re-education and progression of mobility.



Group work relevant to client group.



Communication



To gain valid informed consent and have the capacity to work within a legal framework with patients who lack the capacity to consent to treatment.



To, establish and maintain effective communication with all members of multi-disciplinary team (MDT), therapy department and external agencies to ensure effective and efficient treatment and discharge.



Please see Job description and personal specification for full outline of main role and responsibilities.