The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT), The British Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (BOFAS), Orthopaedic Research UK (ORUK) and Northumbria Healthcare Research Department are offering an award to fund a post to facilitate analysis around service delivery models within foot and ankle surgery across England. The successful candidate can either choose to accept a part time contract of 24 hours or a full time contract of 40 hours to complete this role. Applicants in a training programme may seek to be released 60% from a training programme or exit a training programme for the duration of the fellowship. Additional income may be available from locum on call shifts at the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital.
The applicant will be expected to spend a minimum of 24hrs a week as a GIRFT fellow. The fellowship will focus on clinical improvement in ankle arthritis patient care with a focus on;
1. Interrogating the volume/outcome relationship in primary and revision ankle arthritis surgery
2. Examining the role of ankle arthritis networks and planning the strategic implementation of ankle arthritis networks
3. Define outcomes from ankle arthritis surgery to be used for benchmarking of ankle arthritis networks.
4. Presentation to GIRFT senior leadership team, final report to ORUK, BOFAS and GIRFT, report to ResearchFish (organised by ORUK).
Please note we reserve the right to close this vacancy early if a suitable numbers of applications are received.
The focus of this award is to investigate the evidence base (including synthesis of existing literature and analysis of new data held by the GIRFT programme) around service delivery models for foot and ankle surgery across England. The successful candidate will produce academic publications and reports based on their work that support discussions around organisation of ankle arthritis patient care in England. The successful candidate will work closely with the BOFAS and ORUK to ensure the goals and outputs of the project align with their requirements. They will be part of a wider cohort of around 10 GIRFT clinical fellows. They will have weekly/fortnightly supervision meetings with GIRFT’s Academic Content Lead and have regular access to GIRFT’s national clinical lead for their specialty, Professor Tim Briggs (National Director of Clinical Improvement) and the wider GIRFT Academy team. They will have access to national datasets curated by NHS England (including Hospital Episodes Statistics (admitted patient care and out-patients), Emergency Care and Theatres datasets). They will be provided with support to write peer-reviewed research publications, presentations for conferences and guidelines / recommendations as appropriate. Taught elements will include sessions on quality improvement methodology, leadership, behavioural change, action learning sets, statistics, academic publication, and public engagement.
We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, covering one of the largest geographical areas of any NHS trust in the country. Leading in innovation and quality – opening a state of the art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare, this is the Northumbria Way! Please read ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application.
The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is a national quality improvement initiative designed to improve the treatment and care of patients through in-depth review of services, benchmarking, and presenting a data-driven evidence base to support change. The programme undertakes clinically-led reviews of specialties, combining wide-ranging data analysis with the input and professional knowledge of senior clinicians to examine how things are currently being done and how they could be improved.
Working to the principle that a patient should expect to receive equally timely and effective investigations, treatment and outcomes wherever care is delivered, irrespective of who delivers that care, GIRFT aims to identify approaches from across the NHS that improve outcomes and patient experience, without the need for radical change or additional investment.
Please see the attached Job Description for further information

Please refer the Job description for details