Head of Audiology Services - Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Job Title: Head of Audiology Services
Band: 8C
Hours: 37.5 hours
Base: Luton & Dunstable University Hospital / Bedford Hospital, and any other associated Trust establishments across the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust including outreach clinics and establishments used in the course of Trust business (if necessary for the role).
Reporting to: General Manager
Terms and Conditions of Service: Currently those of Agenda For Change and other local agreements

JOB SUMMARY Reporting to the Clinical Director / General Manager, the post holder will be responsible for leadership of Audiology's scientific service to deliver safe, clinically effective and high-quality care with best use of budgetary and other resources.

As the lead professional for Audiology within the organisation, the postholder will provide expert discipline-specific scientific advice on delivery and development of Audiology services. Operational leadership responsibilities will include pursuit of performance, financial, and other organisational objectives. As a senior scientific leader, the postholder will apply a skillset that reflects the domains of Good Scientific Practice (GSP); professional practice, scientific practice, clinical practice, research, development and innovation, and clinical leadership at consultant level, all applied pro actively, with the end goal to deliver improved outcomes for the population served.

The postholder will be the responsible officer for all domains in the service, with ultimate responsibility for each of them as a professional themselves and for the service that they lead. They will work pro-actively to build strong cross-professional relationships within and beyond the organisation in pursuit of service objectives.

( As described by The Academy of Healthcare Science)

Key Relationships: Clinical Director, members of Audiology senior staff team, senior executive and General Manager level leaders in organisation, ENT Consultants, senior leaders in clinical teams, organisational healthcare science lead and those commissioning Audiology services for and from the organisation. Collaborative relationships relating to Audiology will be pursued with those leading healthcare research and development, representatives of HEIs delivering education and training, third sector organisation leads and representatives of local authority agencies.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Aligned with roles of Consultant Clinical Scientists in other Health Science disciplines and the scope of practice defined by the British Academy of Audiology (BAA) , the post holder will:

• Provide scientific leadership across Audiology Services.
• Provide advanced clinical scientific expertise and interpretation of clinical data to other NHS professionals, and directly to patients. Work as an integral member of the clinical team, contributing directly to the development and delivery of patient management pathways in Audiology.
• Assume clinical scientific responsibilities at a level of accountability equivalent to that of consultant medical staff; providing high value clinical scientific services that require a significant breadth of clinical, technical, and scientific knowledge and expertise.
• Be accountable for clinical scientific advice and delivering treatment directly to patients to improve patient management and outcomes.
• Provide local, regional, and national strategic leadership of Audiology and contributing collectively across clinical scientific services.
• Be responsible for individual patient care including that delivered by others within the Audiological services that they lead, providing expert assurance to the employing organisation for the assessment, diagnosis and management of cases referred to the service.
• Deliver high-level clinical advice and expert care in the management of complex clinical cases involving hearing and hearing related conditions.
• Provide advice to organisations to assure the safe and effective use of health technologies, including compliance with statutory obligations relevant to Audiology.
• Promote and deliver evidence-based practise through evaluation of existing knowledge but, where sufficient evidence does not exist, understanding the significance of this in deciding best management on an individual patient basis.
• Act as an influential advocate for people living with hearing loss and related conditions.
• Lead the translation of cutting-edge scientific research and education, bringing strategic direction and innovation into clinical practice.
• Provide teaching, training, and professional leadership or Clinical Scientists, trainees and others at local and regional level within the NHS and in partnership with academia.
• Support workforce modernisation through the development of balanced multi-professional working for clinical scientific service development.
• Contribute to strategic service redesign, leading the introduction of new technologies, diagnostics, and innovations (either technological or non-technological) in a safe and measured manner through innovation and quality service improvement.
• Promote and lead clinical governance, quality, and safety, advocating, and implementing accreditation and professional regulation.
• Providing essential links between the NHS, academia and industry, facilitating, and participating in opportunities for NHS service transformation.
• Delivering care in line with statutory duties.

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Clinical Leadership

• Responsible for the strategic and operational development of the service. Leadership of the strategic development of the service will be within the context of objectives of the organisation and national health policy. The postholder will contribute pro actively towards higher level planning and policy development as an advocate for Audiology and people with hearing related healthcare needs. Providing expert Audiological advice to clinicians, medical consultants, and senior managers of the organisation, and external bodies.
• Engage with stakeholders and provide leadership to ensure that the Audiology service delivered reflects the needs and preferences of service users and the population served, to ensure that the service is consistent, progressive, responsive, patient focused, safe, equitable, effective, and efficient.
• Encourage use of patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) and other indices to demonstrate the value of Audiology interventions to meet population needs. The postholder will actively promote indicators of the value of Audiology interventions and otherwise raise the profile of Audiology and the local service.
• Provide expert scientific advice and recommendations to those commissioning services to ensure the hearing related needs of the local population are met.
• Lead and motivate Audiology staff to deliver effective care, working collaboratively to achieve agreed service objectives in a changing healthcare environment.
• Contribute pro actively within the local healthcare science community towards common goals.
• Contribute through national scientific and professional bodies towards collaborative advancement of Audiology practice, ultimately to the benefit of service users. Ensure that scientific staff similarly contribute to advance their knowledge, skills, and scientific leadership development.

Clinical Practice

• Within their clinical competence at consultant level, provide expert direct patient care for a caseload of the most complex patients for their highly specialised area of Audiological practice, including participation in multidisciplinary teams, where they may take a lead role. They will receive and initiate consultant referrals.
• As a practicing consultant clinician, provide expert clinical advice to other clinicians/teams within and external to the Audiology service, on the care of individual patients and patient groups.
• Lead and encourage the development of an integrated Audiology service that is multi professional, multi agency, feature continuous improvement and seeks service user engagement.

Professional Practice, including quality Assurance

• Ensure high levels of professionalism in own practice, taking a pro active approach and encouraging the same within the Audiology Team. This will include engagement with other professionals; encouraging a culture of openness to scrutiny; contributing to innovation, and development within and beyond the organisation.
• Responsible for ensuring quality assurance systems are in place across the Audiology service, complying with stipulated national accreditation and other formal schemes (e.g., CQC and UKAS IQIPS) to provide external quality assurance. To include regular audit against standards of good practice, benchmarking activity against key performance and other indicators within a comprehensive quality assurance system.
• Ensure that the Audiology service meets nationally recognised accreditation and/or externally audited service quality standards requirements, within a locally defined quality management system or framework. Identify and progress actions to address any shortfalls and provide improvement.
• Ensure that the service has high standards of day to day governance relating to quality of care; that adverse incidents are properly investigated in line with organisational policy, that systems are put in place to learn, share, and improve against any shortfalls. To address any nonconformities that arise, using tools such as root cause analysis to mitigate risk of future incidents or shortfalls.
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