‘JIG’ Job Information Guide
General:
Post Title
General Paediatrics and Neonates (Level 1 unit)
Coding No
Hospital Details
Name: Royal Free Hospital
Website: http://www.royalfree.nhs.uk/
College Tutor: Rahul Chodhari (r.chodhari@nhs.net), Susie Gabbie
(susie.gabbie@nhs.net)
Educational lead: Neil Thompson (neil.thompson1@nhs.net)
Travel Info
Train/Tube: Hampstead Heath (overground), Belsize Park (Northern line)
Bus: Buses 24, 46, 168, 268 and C11 all serve the hospital
Car/Parking: Available onsite out-of-hours only. Contact Dee Davis (car parking
manager (ext. 35858, dee.davis@nhs.net) for information and application forms.
Living/Accommodation
Hospital Accommodation Email: rf.accommodation@nhs.net
Phone number: ext. 33490 or 34716
Departmental:
Team
No of Consultants:
15 x general and neonates, 2 x gastro
SHOs:
14 (4 Paeds trainees, 1 community paeds trainee, 5 GPVTS trainees, 4 FY2s)
Rota & Responsibilities
Normal day shift - 9am to 5pm
Long day shift - 9am to 9pm
Night shift - 9pm to 9am
Weekend – 9am to 9pm
There is a minimum of 4 SHOs on for paediatrics and neonates and 1 SHO for gastro during a
normal day. 2 SHOs will be on a long day shift (one for neonates and one for general paeds
and gastro). 2 SHOs overnight and 2 SHOs on the weekend.
During a normal day one consultant is on the ward until 5pm (PoW – physician of the week, they
will be the same all week). There is one consultant for neonates until 5pm and one consultant
for A&E until 5pm. At 5pm there is one evening consultant who covers everything until they
hand over to the night consultant who covers everything.
On a weekend there is one consultant covering the ward, who goes home after half a day and
one consultant for the neonatal unit and A&E who will take over responsibility for the ward as
well when the ward consultant goes home.
Normal day general paeds:
Handover at 0900, allocate one SHO to carry the A&E bleep. You will see patients for urgent
referral clinic in the morning and see any children presenting under 6 months of age or referred
to the consultant by A&E, GPs etc.
The remainder of the SHOs to do the ward round with the PoW (Physician of the Week)
consultant.
There is a CAMHS eating disorders unit. The care is lead by the CAMHS team but you may be
asked to provide medical assessments and take blood from high risk patients.
During the day patients will come to the paediatric day unit from a variety of sources and you will
be asked to review them. There is an outstanding jobs list which will need to be looked at each
day.
Handover at 1630 to the evening team who will handover at 2100 to the night team.
Normal day Neonates:
Handover at 0900. One SHO will go to postnatal ward and one SHO to do the neonatal round.
The SHO on the neonatal unit normally covers labour ward to allow the postnatal SHO to get on
with baby checks and reviews. Any baby under 7 days old presenting to A&E will be seen by
the neonatal team rather than the paediatric side.
Handover at 1630 to the evening team and then again to night team at 2100.
Weekend – General paeds:
Do the ward round with the consultant, finish urgent jobs and then off to A&E. Hand over at
2100 to the night team.
Weekend – Neonates:
The consultant covering neonates also covers A&E. Hopefully A&E won’t be too busy so they’ll
be able to do the ward round and collate any jobs whilst you hit the postnatal ward and cover
labour ward. Handover at 2100 to the night team.
Nights:
Fairly obvious, one person covers neonates and one person general paeds. Lots of crosscovering though.
Departmental strengths
The unit is a Consultant led service which means working alongside consultants in everything
that you do. Whether it’s putting in cannulas or phoning CATS. Which also means no excuse
for a lack of work based place assessments!
As well as a specialist gastro team, there are paediatric ENT and Plastics teams not to mention
the eating disorders unit. Loads of opportunities for extra learning.
One of the friendliest departments you will ever work in.
Hampstead Heath is just outside the front door and there are loads of great places to eat, drink
and be merry.
Completely flexible rota which means you won’t be missing your own wedding.
The rota is well staffed so there are ample opportunities to attend clinic.
Training opportunities
High fidelity simulation training on a weekly basis.
Psychosocial meetings for the neonatal unit Mondays 11am, A&E Wednesdays 10am and
general paeds Thursdays 2pm.
Risk meetings every 2nd Thursday of the month
Ad hoc Infectious disease meetings
X-ray meeting Wednesdays 1200
Specialist gastro team – they do teaching sessions, there is the opportunity to go to clinics.
Teaching
Morning teaching on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays
Joint ward rounds with microbiology on Wednesday mornings
North Central and East London (NCEL) regional teaching every Wednesday afternoon.
Teaching split between Royal Free, Whittington and UCLH sites. The department works on an
on-call basis on Wednesday afternoons so most people can attend
Monthly NCEL case exchange programme. Evening case based teaching designed to share
specialist experiences between different hodpitals
Top tips
Buy the hot chicken salad for lunch in the mess
Look through your rota and plan which clinics you want to go to on days when we’re well staffed
All of your WBPAs will be done by consultants so start asking early in the rotation or they’ll get
really grumpy
Read the refeeding protocol, you will be asked to bleed lots of eating disorders patients who are
at risk of reffeeding syndrome