About this role
Job summary
Worcestershire Acute Histopathology Department has ISO 15189 and HTA accreditation and is based at Worcester Royal Hospital. The consultant team consists of 7 substantive consultants and one locum consultant with 2 vacancies. There is established voice recognition and extended BMS role in specimen dissection including all cancer resections. In house HER 2, DDISH reporting for breast cancer is routinely done. The department has introduced in-house testing of MMR for Gynecological and GI cancers. The department is advanced in moving to digital histopathology for significant volumes of work. The department workload is over 37,000 histology and approx. 5000 diagnostic cytology requests. The Royal College of Pathologists guidelines for staffing and workload have been implemented for workload management within the department. The departmental staffing comprises 1 head BMS, 30 technical staff (including BMSs and MLAs) and 6 APT's and 2 mortuary assistants. The diagnostic work includes specimens from the breast, skin, urology, and gastrointestinal tract together with gynecological, pulmonary and head & neck specimens.
AAC date is scheduled to be face to face on Tuesday 20th October 2026 - Candidates would also be expected to conduct a 5 minute presentation on the following title "Please discuss how the digital pathology and pathology networks can best be used to maximise efficiency and patients safety in Histopathology. Highlight the advantages and Disadvantages"
Main duties of the job
The successful candidate will participate in the provision of a general histopathology and diagnostic cytopathology service. The department operates a lead pathologist model for cancer MDT meetings without any degree of subspecialisation; however, personal interests can be accommodated. It is anticipated the full-time job plan will contain 10 programmed activities worked flexibly by mutual agreement. These will include 8.0 PAs for direct clinical care and 2.0 SPAs for supporting professional activities. Laboratory duties are carried out on a rota basis by agreement with consultant colleagues. They include the provision of a comprehensive diagnostic histopathology service for The Trust. You will be supported by strong and experienced reporting teams. The department is involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and is proactive in developing and adopting solutions to maintain high quality sustainable reporting including an expanding scientist reporting strategy, automated laboratory processes and imminent adoption of digital image reporting. The successful candidate should have an interest in Head and neck, skin, urology, gynae/colp and lung reporting. These specialities are those Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS trust is most in need of currently. Most other specialties can be considered. There is the opportunity to participate in Mohs surgery and coronial post mortems.
About us
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is a large acute and specialised hospital trust that provides a range of local acute services to the residents of Worcestershire and more specialised services to a larger population in Herefordshire and beyond.
The Trust operates hospital-based services from three sites in Kidderminster, Redditch and Worcester
Our workforce is more than 7,000 strong, and our caring staff are recognised as providing good and outstanding patient-centred care. You could be one of them.
We are committed to recruiting the best people to work with us. Our values, which we ask all staff to demonstrate, underpin our everyday work and remain firmly at the heart of all we do.
Being open and honest
Ensuring people feel cared for
Showing respect to everyone
We are committed to developing a culture of continuous improvement by embedding the principles of our Improvement System.
We are proud to have achieved Timewise accreditation - this means we are committed to embedding flexible working within our organisation as a flex positive employer.
DBS Checks and Costs
Any applicants who are offered posts requiring a DBS check as part of their employment check will have the cost of this check (at the current rate) deducted from their salary. Please see link in Supporting Information section for more details on DBS checks and costs.
Job description Job responsibilities
This job description, together with the job plan, will be reviewed annually and agreed with the Clinical Director and Divisional Director, on behalf of the Chief Medical Officer, to ensure that it continually reflects the areas of work, clinical responsibility of the post and purchaser requirements.
A suitably experienced post-holder will be expected to provide a clinical service in the relevant specialty to patients of the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and to General Practitioners. The post-holder will be expected to provide a service to patients of the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, General Practitioners and to attend multi-disciplinary meetings. The successful candidate will be expected to work within multi-disciplinary teams in providing high quality clinical care. It is anticipated work will be undertaken on three sites and closer to the patients home. The Trust is seeking to extend services to GP surgeries/health centres etc and job plans may be revised in due course. The post-holder will provide support to the A&E department and acute medicine to ensure timely appropriate care and patient flow through the hospital. The post-holder will provide consultation and advisory service to clinical colleagues in the Trust and Primary Care. The post-holder will attend cross county and cross site meetings. The post-holder will collaborate with colleagues to deliver a high quality, timely service and to work towards meeting the Trust's and departmental objectives. The post-holder will, if relevant, participate in the on call rota to ensure that both emergency and urgent services are provided out of normal hours, to be shared equally with Consultant colleagues in post. The Trust would expect a consultant whilst undertaking on-call duties to attend the hospital site to review patients when clinically necessary. The consultant on call must be prepared to attend willingly whenever requested to do so by a member of their medical and nursing team. The post-holder, whilst undertaking weekend on call duties, will attend the hospital to undertake patient reviews.
A formal job plan will be agreed between the post-holder and their Clinical Director and Divisional Director, on behalf of the Chief Medical Officer, three months after the start date of the post. The job plan for the first three months will be based on the provisional timetable shown below.
The Job Plan is subject to annual review and will be a prospective agreement that sets out a consultant's duties, responsibilities and objectives for the coming year, covering all aspects of professional practice including clinical work, teaching, research, education and managerial responsibilities. It will provide an agreed schedule of commitments, both internal and external. In addition, it will include personal objectives, including details of their link to wider service objectives, and details of the support if any required by the consultant to fulfil the job plan and the objectives.
Provisional Assessment of Programmed Activities in Job Plan:
For a full time contract
Direct Clinical Care:
8 PA's on average per week (includes clinical activity, clinically related activity, predictable & unpredictable emergency work)
Cross-site travel and clinical administration time is included in each session of DCC
Supporting Professional Activities:
2 SPAs per week to support your personal CPD and revalidation related activities.
Additional PA allocations are provided for leadership roles, educational supervision (0.25 PA per trainee), appraiser role (0.25 PA for trained appraisers) or other pre-agreed additional activities.
Person Specification
Qualifications Essential
Full GMC Registration with a Licence to Practise. Entry on the GMC Specialist register in Pathology or expected within 6 months of interview date via CCT or European Community Rights. Success in Intercollegiate Specialty Examination or overseas equivalent
Desirable
Higher Degree.
Personal Attributes Essential
Ability to work in a team. Enquiring, critical approach to work. Ability to communicate effectively with patients, relatives, gp's, nurses and other agencies. Commitment to continuing medical education.
Desirable
Willingness to undertake additional professional responsibilities at local, regional or national levels.
Research Experience Essential
Ability to apply research outcomes to clinical problems. An awareness of current specialty specific developments and initiative.
Desirable
Publications in relevant peer-reviewed journals in the last 5 years. Evidence of having undertaken original research.
Experience Essential
Clinical training and experience equivalent to that required for gaining (UK) CCT in Pathology. Ability to offer expert clinical opinion on a range of problems both emergency and elective within Pathology. Ability to take full and independent responsibility for clinical care of patients . Expertise in sub-specialty.
Management and Administrative Experience Essential
Ability to organise and prioritise workload effectively. Ability to advise on efficient and smooth running of specialist service. Ability to organise and manage outpatients priorities. Ability to manage and lead the specialty firm and multi-disciplinary team. Experience of audit management and conducting clinical audit.
Desirable
Ability to manage and lead specialist unit and working parties as appropriate. Ability to use the evidence based and clinical audit to support decision making.
Teaching Experience Essential
Ability to teach clinical skills to medical, nursing staff and other disciplines. Experience of teaching clinical skills to undergraduates and postgraduates.
Desirable
Ability to supervise postgraduate research.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Certificate of Sponsorship Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Employer details Employer name Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Address Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Charles Hastings Way
Worcester
Worcestershire
WR5 1DD
United Kingdom
Employer's website https://www.worcsacute.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)