Senior Therapeutic Radiographer (Band 6)

Here at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, we are proud to provide expert, compassionate care for our local population. We are ranked as the third in the country for research, embedding education and training across the organisation. Our main hub is the Queen Alexandra Hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals on the south coast employing over 8,700 staff.

Our patients come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds because it makes our hospital stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for getting it right for patients, colleagues, and our community, you will find a home at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust.

The team is like an extended family, with a real sense of community where everyone looks out for each other” - Portsmouth Radiographer

Portsmouth Radiotherapy department covers a wide catchment area, treating patients from Portsmouth, Southampton, West Sussex, and the Isle of Wight. As well as a daily routine of scanning, planning, and treating patients, we also offer an out of hours service at the weekends.

We would love to welcome new and experienced senior Radiographers to join our team. You will find a motivated, enthusiastic and forward-thinking department, who won the Society of Radiographers Regional South East Team of the Year 2023. We are keen to support you in your own development and working hard to improve the quality of treatment for our patients.

As part of the Band 6 role, we are looking to meet the new Health Education England (HEE) standards of having enhanced practitioners within our workforce. Enhanced practice is a level of practice within the healthcare workforce for those delivering the majority of clinical activity who have moved beyond novice/competent and who are not working at the level of advanced practice. This is a highly valued, broad and essential level of practice which we are exploring and hope to give those opportunities to our Band 6 radiographers in the future.

We have four TrueBeam 3.0 linear accelerators which include the advanced IGRT imaging such as online 4DCBCT, iCBCT and triggered imaging. We have 6DOF couches in use for H+N, upper GI and Lung SABR patients, alongside abdomen compression immobilisation. We have a wide-bore Siemens GOSIM CT scanner which was installed in January 2022. We also run Brachytherapy, Orthovoltage and on-treatment review services. We link all of our department together using ARIA V15.6 and are a completely paperless department.

We have Consultant Radiographers in breast and Urology and are due to increase these opportunities very soon. We are also actively recruiting radiographer apprentices and advanced practitioners in the near future.

For more detailed information and pictures of our department, please see the “PHU Radiotherapy Department Brochure” link in the additional information section

Our future developments for the department are to expand our SABR program for oligometastases and have had RTTQA approval to be a trial centre for PACE-NODES, comparing 5# SABR for Prostates and Prostate and nodes. We intend to implement the use of an auto-contouring software to make planning more efficient and have aspirations of purchasing and installing SGRT in the summer of 2024 to move towards tattoo-less setups.

We actively encourage diversity in our workforce, and would welcome applications from Radiographers currently working outside of the UK (with HCPC registration).

We would welcome informal visits to the department, or a Teams call to discuss the post and opportunities we can offer. Please contact Ben Meigh - ben.meigh@porthosp.nhs.uk if you would like to discuss the role.

Essential

BSc Therapeutic Radiography or DCR(T) or equivalent

• HCPC registration to practice as a Therapeutic Radiographer
• Post-graduate education (or be willing to take part in Level 7 education to become Senior Enhanced Practitioner if opportunity arises)

Skills and Knowledge

• Effective at working independently and within a team
• Ability to deal with emotive and confrontational situations using conflict resolution skills
• Ability to deal with and respond to interruptions in the working environment
• Strong personal resilience and ability to act appropriately in stressful and/or emotive situations
• Demonstrable competency in the use of all aspects of complex radiotherapy treatment and planning equipment
• Ability to successfully problem-solve and trouble-shoot treatment and planning related patient setup issues
• Ability to understand own limitations and when to ask for help
• Demonstrable skills in teaching and supervising student radiographers
• Understand the benefits of and how to work within an ISO9001:2015 quality system
• Awareness of national cancer agenda and how it relates to own practice
• Current knowledge of developments in radiotherapy practice
• Evidence of CPD

Experience

• Appropriate level of post qualification experience, working across both treatment and pre-treatment areas, using a range of modern equipment
• Experience of working in orthovoltage & brachytherapy is desirable
• Experience of a range of radiotherapy treatment techniques
• Previous experience of working within the NHS

Portsmouth Radiotherapy SoR Team of the Year 2023

PHU Radiotherapy Department Brochure

Organisational Chart

Job Description

We welcome the unique contributions that you can bring in terms of your education, opinions, culture, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and expression, nation of origin, age, languages spoken, veteran’s status, colour, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and beliefs.