St Margaret’s Hospice Care has a fantastic opportunity for a Specialty Doctor to join our team for a period of 6 months, from August 2025.
This role is based in Taunton Inpatient Unit with 1 in 4 weekends on-call, covering Taunton IPU. This will be a fixed term post, working 8 sessions Monday to Friday.
Pay will be based on level of experience using the NHS speciality Doctor pay scale.
You won’t just be joining a fantastic team – you’ll be part of a welcoming, community minded charity. Our mission is to provide excellent specialist palliative care for patients and support to their families. Everyone here contributes and has a part to play towards our goal. If you speak to any of our staff or volunteers, they will tell you how the patient is at the heart of everything they do. So, if you’re looking for a role where you can really make a difference, working as part of a supportive team, we could be a perfect match.
What can you expect to be doing?
Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, you will be based at St Margaret’s Inpatient Unit in Taunton. There are 12 beds in the unit, used for patients who need specialist symptom control or have complex end of life care needs.
The weekend role involves a ward round of the inpatient unit each Saturday and Sunday following handover with the nursing team. The on-call is then for phone advice as required but there may be a need to revisit the unit in the case of an emergency admission or to review a patient acutely. Second on-call phone support is provided by a Palliative Care Consultant.
IT training and induction will be provided prior to commencement of the post, with access to ongoing support via the wider hospice education programme.
Your day-to-day work will involve
- Providing specialist medical care, advice and support in order to provide high quality individualised care to patients/clients in line with local and national guidelines.
- Providing medical assessment and care for all patients on the inpatient unit, in line with the care plan – ensuring that medical care is evidence-based (as far as is possible) and best practice.
- Holistically assess patients admitted to the inpatient unit, planning initial management in discussion with the available senior doctor as appropriate.
- Completing holistic assessment records, discharge letters, letters notifying death, TTO prescriptions and anticipatory prescribing.
We offer ongoing support, training and guidance to help you be the best you can be. To help your application, we will be looking for the following Core Competencies and how you will use these help us put our values into practice.
Our Core Competencies for our Specialty Doctors:
- Self-awareness - have an understanding of evidence-based medicine and a basic knowledge of the management of symptom control, including familiarity with prescribing opioids.
- Working with others – have the ability to communicate well with people on sensitive subjects in a non-judgmental way both verbally and written.
- Outcomes and results - demonstrate a good understanding of clinical governance and quality outcomes.
- Leading in your area – Participation and promotion of multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working.
Expertise in the field is not essential, but experience working in a palliative care setting would be helpful.
Further details on our competencies are included on the job pack attached to the advert.
What can we offer you?
Holiday entitlement
- In line with 2021 NHS Speciality doctor contract
Pension scheme
- NHS employees eligible to continue with their NHS pension scheme*
Award-winning Employee Assistance Programme for you and your family offering:
- Vitality & wellbeing health portal for non-emergency care
- Unlimited access to 24/7 online GP Consultations for employees, their partners, and dependent children as well as Expert Case Management
- Confidential and free 24-hour Employee Assistance
- Counselling and support
- Legal, financial, and medical information and advice
And more…
- Blue Light Discount Card
- Excellent learning and development opportunities
- Free on-site parking in Yeovil and Taunton
- Volunteering and fundraising opportunities
*Eligibility criteria applies
If you want to get to know our team or have a chat before applying, we'd love to hear from you. Just reach out to Dr Kate Shorthose via email: [email protected]
We are currently managing the recruitment process in-house and kindly ask that recruitment agencies refrain from contacting us with candidates for this role.
For any questions about our recruitment process, please contact [email protected].
We welcome applications from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences to enrich our team. You can always contact us for a chat if there's anything you want to talk about before you apply.
Unfortunately, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time.
If you have all the information you need, just click apply. We can't wait to hear from you!
Closing date: 13th July 2025
Interview date: Afternoon of the 14th July 2025
