Family Physician for Subacute Inpatient Units, 22-RAH-FAM-TU-20

Alberta Health Services is inviting applications from Family Physicians to join the Royal Alexandra Hospital (RAH) Bridging and Transitions units. The unit is expanding it current bed capacity and is looking to add another team of 4.

Patients are transferred to the Bridging Unit from acute care units at the RAH once they are considered to be medically stable but requiring prolonged admission, often for placement or social issues. Patients are admitted to the Transition Unit from the community or other facilities for a variety of reasons including rehabilitation, stabilization of chronic medical issues, detailed cognitive assessment, or placement to a higher level of care. Although these patients are considered medically stable or non-acute, they generally have multiple cognitive, physical, psychiatric and social co-morbidities that require careful management and monitoring. Chronic medical conditions and screening are addressed as patients generally have prolonged stays on the units.

The successful candidates will join an integrated group of healthcare professionals. Each physician is scheduled for 13 weeks per calendar year, in 2 or 4 week blocks, with each week beginning on Wednesdays at 8 am. Handover to the following physician will be both written on the chart, as well as verbal (telephone) on Tuesday afternoon or evening. The responsibilities for successful individuals would include clinical care for approximately 25 inpatients, working collaboratively with the interdisciplinary team, attending bi-weekly scheduled team meetings, attending family meetings as needed, updating families regularly by telephone, completing all administrative data related to care for patients, and being available by phone (first call) at all times during weeks on service to address nursing concerns. Regular rounding is expected to start no earlier than 7 am and no later than 9 am weekday mornings, and likely will take 5-6 hours per day. Each patient will be seen a minimum of three times per week. Rounding on the weekends will be partly at the discretion of the physician but also depend on patient clinical needs and timing of new admissions (e.g. acute clinical deterioration would necessitate returning to hospital to assess the patient). Physicians will be required to assess all new admissions/transfers within 24 hours. Similarly, unit clerks/nursing will give the physician at least 24 hour notice of an impending discharge so that paperwork can be completed without delay. Discharge summaries will be dictated in a timely manner.

There will be evening and overnight support for medical emergencies on the ward in the form of an on-call, in-house Clinical Assistant, who can be called by the staff physician for a patient who needs to be seen immediately. The Clinical Assistant will only respond to staff physician calls, and will not be responsible for completing paperwork or non-urgent needs. This Clinical Assistant is assigned to the Family Medicine acute inpatient units as well, so will only be available for emergencies.

During weeks on service, it is required that the physician is not rostered on another service for acute care (e.g. HMT at RAH or other hospital). Working at an outpatient clinic or other non-acute service is acceptable as long as this work doesn’t interfere with the physician’s ability to carry out expected duties on the RAH units.

It is anticipated that the hospital will transition to Connect Care (computerized patient records) in May, 2022. Physicians will be required to be trained as Connect Care users, if such training has not already been completed.