Advanced Clinical Practitioner Paediatric Physiotherapist

A Vacancy at University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust.

We are seeking to recruit an enthusiastic and highly motivated Advanced Clinical Physiotherapy Practitioner (ACP) or Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist (banding depending on experience) in Paediatric Orthopaedics to join our established multidisciplinary team.

This is an exciting opportunity for a highly specialist, autonomous practitioner to work at an advanced level of practice, playing a key role in the assessment and management of children and young people with orthopaedic presentations.

The post holder will independently lead advanced practice clinics, triage and manage referrals, request and interpret investigations, and make advanced clinical decisions within agreed protocols. You will work closely with a Consultant Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon from University Hospital Southampton and the wider MDT, contributing to high-quality, patient centred care and service development.

This role is ideal for an experienced clinician with strong clinical reasoning skills, confidence working autonomously, and a commitment to collaborative multidisciplinary working.

Post details

· Fixed term for 9 months (maternity leave cover)

· 11.25 hours per week / 0.3 WTE

· Based within Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgery

Informal visits or discussions are encouraged.

UHD are investing, developing and transforming Trust services in line with the New Hospital Programme. As part of this, some services may move site this year or next, either temporarily or permanently. Recruiting Managers will be happy to answer any service-specific questions at interview.

If a role or service relocates as part of a planned move, excess mileage will not be reimbursed. Travel from home to the new work base will be classed as a normal commute. Any other changes will be managed under Trust or national terms and conditions.

UHD has active networks including Women’s, BAME, Pride, EU, Pro Ability, and Armed Forces. We support Disability Confident and Armed Forces Covenant interview schemes.

AI tools may be used, but applications must honestly reflect your own skills and experience. Integrity is key to our recruitment process.

For UHD employees, this fixed-term post will be offered as a secondment in line with the Trust’s Secondment Policy. Please speak with your line manager before applying.

To be responsible for the rapid assessment, diagnostics, and treatment of individuals within the elective paediatric orthopaedic service using an advanced level of professional accountability, autonomy, and judgement, underpinned by Masters level theory and experience. This includes highly complex decision-making across a broad range of differentiated and undifferentiated individual presentations and complex situations, synthesising information from multiple sources to make appropriate, evidence-based judgements and/or diagnoses.

To triage and assess babies, children and young people referred for consideration of orthopaedic surgery.

To provide clinical leadership to the ACP & ECP team and work with others within the directorate to determine the priority workload of the team across the directorate.

To plan and manage complete episodes of care, working in collaboration with the consultants and others, delegating, and referring as appropriate, to ensure timely, effective management and optimise health outcomes, in line with the evidence base and nationally recognised best practice.

To play a key operational role and maintain a pro-active approach to managing and leading clinical pathways and flow.

Working closely with a multi-professional team, lead the AP paediatric orthopaedic service in delivery of high quality, performance, and financial frameworks.

To promote and implement service and policy development and redesign, impacting beyond own area and other disciplines, informed by current best practice and evidence-base, in accordance with values-based care of the trust.

To act as a resource to others and to develop, deliver and evaluate a range of relevant specialist programmes of education and development for individuals and large groups, including the wider multidisciplinary team, both internally and external to the trust.

This advert closes on Tuesday 9 Jun 2026

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A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident.