Are you a band 6 Physiotherapist/Nurse or band 5 looking for the next step in your career? Do you have community or respiratory experience?
This role involves independently assessing patients with chronic respiratory disease in their own homes, community clinics, pulmonary rehabilitation settings and supporting patients within the Virtual Ward.
You will provide specialist advice to primary care teams and other generalist clinicians, delivering expert management of symptoms such as chronic breathlessness, cough, airway secretions and supporting medicines optimisation.
Responsibilities also include conducting home oxygen assessments and reviewing both long-term and ambulatory oxygen prescriptions, including performing capillary blood gas analysis and interpretation for LTOT, as well as undertaking 6-minute walk tests for ambulatory oxygen assessment.
The role requires close, integrated working with a wide multidisciplinary team—including Community Rehab, Speech and Language Therapy, Dietetics, support workers and administrators—as well as wider system partners such as GPs, community nursing teams, acute clinicians and consultants to ensure seamless, patient-centred respiratory care.
For ambitious clinicians with less experience, this role can also be offered as adevelopmental Band 6 position, with the expectation that you will complete the COPD Diploma module and achieve home oxygen competencies within 12 months. Upon successful completion, the role will progress to Band 6.
This post will primarily focus on pulmonary rehabilitation classes which are provided in a range of venues across North East Essex, however due to the overall aims of the team & to support effective team working, you may be asked to carry out home visits to patients for assessment/review within your scope of skills.
You should have skills in engaging with people & putting them at ease & motivational skills. At times this requires a problem solving/asset based approach to help people overcome barriers to pulmonary rehabilitation. You should have a good grasp of the principles of pulmonary rehabilitation be familiar with & able to discuss how to apply, the British Thoracic society guidelines for pulmonary rehabilitation.
You will complete assessment, care planning, education, interventions to support respiratory management & liaison with other healthcare professionals. You need to be able to work as an autonomous practitioner as on home visits & at weekends you will be a lone worker. However, there is support available from team & division colleagues when needed.
Currently the service runs 9am-5pm but due to expanding our pulmonary rehabilitation offer to meet the needs of the local population, please be aware that there may be requirement to work evenings (anticipated to finish before 8pm) during the length of this contract. We roster ahead so this will be planned.
We are ESNEFT and we provide hospital and community health services to almost one million people across east Suffolk and north Essex. Our dedicated staff deliver care from acute hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, community hospitals, surgeries, community clinics and in patients’ own homes.
We are one of the largest NHS organisations in England, employing more than 12,000 staff.
We pride ourselves on supporting our staff. We offer a wide range of training and development opportunities, as well as flexible working options.
Along with supporting you to achieve your career goals we offer a generous pension scheme, unsocial hours payments (where applicable), 27 days annual leave on commencement (pro rata) and access to a range of NHS discounts. Our Staff Health and Wellbeing programme offer a variety of services.
Our philosophy is thatTime Mattersto everyone. Across the Trust, we concentrate on improving the things we do and removing those which cause time delays for our staff and patients.
We are investing in our commitment to Time Matters with a partnership with leading electronic patient record (EPR) supplier Epic. This digital transformation will bring what’s widely regarded as the world’s best EPR system to ESNEFT, transforming life in hospital for staff and patients.
If you are passionate about patient care and want to develop your skills and knowledge, then we want to hear from you.
Find out about living and working here -
For full details of the responsibilities and duties of this role please see the attached job description.
Due to the nature of community work & the community locations for our clinics, a driving licence & access to a car are essential.
This advert closes on Wednesday 17 Dec 2025