Occupational Therapist – Ashford

Why Work for Us

Do you have experience in Occupational Therapy?

Do you want to be part of a pro-active multi-disciplinary and professional team, who put excellent patient care as their priority?

Are you passionate about supporting and empowering patients to live well until their very last moment in their life?

• Through holistic needs assessment
• Providing individually planned care informed by patient wishes
• Supporting patients and their families/carers to have open and honest conversations about their wishes for end-of-life care

If so, then the role of Occupational Therapist at Pilgrims may be just the job for you!

As a member of the wider clinical team, the successful candidate will be involved in assessing and developing appropriate plans of intervention and support for patients and their families, acting as a resource in providing advice on active palliative care management.

Key Duties:

• To use evidence based knowledge and advanced clinical reasoning to undertake highly complex clinical assessment, in a relevant location, e.g. nursing/residential home, hospital or in a patients own home, identifying needs, treatment aims and goals in collaboration with the individual patient and the MDT.
• These may be in-patients, out-patients or those attending outreach clinics. Assessment and treatment may include advanced skills in wheelchair adjustment, therapeutic handling / hoisting and discharge planning in a busy and unpredictable environment.
• To use specialist skills to engage patients with challenging behaviour, psychological and psychiatric needs in purposeful treatment programmes, in collaboration with the MDT, to ensure the provision of holistic care.
• To determine patients level of understanding of treatment plan to ensure valid patient consent and work within legal framework with patients who lack capacity to consent.
• To use recognised outcome measures and goal setting measures to motivate challenging clients.
• To use advance level specialist assessment and analytical skills. To utilise expert clinical reasoning, in order to interpret and analyse clinical and non-clinical facts to form accurate diagnosis and prognoses in a range of highly complex conditions.

Recognising the need to support employees working within this particular field, we provide an extensive range of physical and psychological support measures through our health and wellbeing programme, to ensure your success, including:

• A supportive and friendly working environment
• Regular quality interactions with our clinical and medical teams
• Strong working relationships with other members of the multi-disciplinary teams
• Ongoing training and CPD/career development
• Access to a range of resources to ensure staff have access to help and support where and when they need it
• Regular self-care and development sessions

About us

As an award-winning employer, Pilgrims provides end-of-life care services to patients and their families across east Kent.

Our commitment is to provide open, compassionate care and expertise for patients and their families – both in the community and in-patient units.

Our Vision

“Of a community where people with a terminal illness and their family and friends are supported and empowered to live well in mind and body until the very last moment of their life”.

We recognise that our workforce is integral to the delivery of our Vision and our organisational and charitable aims. Pilgrims Hospices continues to create a highly skilled, motivated, engaged and healthy workforce by providing an environment where staff and volunteers feel highly motivated to perform their roles to a consistently high standard, and actively role model our organisational behaviours and values.

To achieve our Vision, we have a shared set of values and behaviours that enable us to be the people and the charity that patients and their loved ones need us to be. They form our CODE, which guides us in our daily working and decision making:

Compassionate We treat everyone with compassion and care

Open We communicate openly, honestly and effectively

Dynamic We are dynamic, improving and developing our service

Empowered We empower people to achieve their outcomes

Other benefits

As an Employer of Choice, our commitment to supporting our employees and volunteers is a key priority.

Our Health and Wellbeing Strategy is an important step in ensuring the sustainability of our workforce, and clearly outlines our strategic intentions to improve employee capability, resilience, and engagement, to adapt to and embrace change as the health sector continues to develop.

Our hospices offer:

• Modern, friendly and highly professional working environments
• Opportunities for professional development through a range of extensive learning
• Alignment with NHS pay rates and continuity in membership of the NHS pension scheme
• A sense of achievement in supporting a worthwhile cause
• A sense of wellbeing
• A good work-life balance
• Locations across well-populated areas of east Kent – all providing very good road and rail links
• NHS and financial discounts i.e. Blue Light Card
• Cycle to Work Schemes
• Free hospice parking

We invest in our employees, which is one of the key things that makes us an award-winning employer of choice.

If you think this is your ideal role and want to join us and contribute to providing high quality patient care and support to those at the end of their life, please apply now.