Clinical Lead, Emergency Health Unit (EHU)
Summary
Save the Children’s newly established Emergency Health Unit (EHU) is designed to enhance and expand Save the Children’s life-saving work in acute emergencies, including disease outbreaks, with a focus on frontline health (including surgical), nutrition and WASH programming. The EHU initiates direct health response within 3 days of a declared emergency, creating the space for in-country response teams to focus on longer term response planning and scale up. Responses will be based on Save the Children’s core public health approach, covering the biggest childhood killers, including public health outreach, coupled with direct clinical care, including primary and secondary health, with surgical capacity.
EHU programming will increase the early impact of Save the Children responses, saving more children’s lives and increasing donor confidence to raise funds for immediate and longer term work. The EHU aims to reach at least 1.5 million people directly and leverage $100m during the period of Save the Children’s new strategy (2016-18).
The EHU consists of a central team, based in the UK, and standing EHU response teams who are equipped to deliver response modules. At this point in time there are two types of EHU response teams: Outpatient/Primary Health Teams and In Patient Teams. Save the Children US will be managing one Primary Health Team of 7 people, including clinical, WASH and Logistics specialists who are able to mobilize responses in line with the outpatient modules. Each EHU Team will deploy 2-3 times per year for a period of 3 months, enabling a smooth transition to the longer term response. Team members working for the SCUS EHU team may be based globally and must be ready to deploy with the team when an emergency strikes.
This role will manage the clinical lead of one primary team – cholera unit, mobile clinic or vaccination unit – providing technical leadership for the team and direct clinical care. The Clinical Lead will contribute to country emergency preparedness plans and provide support to the training of the response team. During a response, this position will supervise the clinical team, ensuring adherence to clinical protocols, represent the response at project level and together with the country health lead, Ministry of Public Health and health cluster contribute to effective integration and exit strategies.
Essential Duties, Responsibilities and Impact
Emergency preparedness (10%)
- Become familiar with the overall content and function of module, primary health care, immunization and acute watery diarrhoea management and its deployment.
- Be familiar with organograms and budgets for each scenario.
- To undergo programme specific training and to contribute to a training programme for the team.
- Support country teams to prepare for emergencies. Providing training and assisting in development of emergency preparedness plans.
Clinical management and oversight (60%)
- To provide technical leadership for emergency health assessments, ensuring assessment findings are documented and that all assessments include a specific analysis of children’s needs
- To oversee clinical care of specific modules – OPD, immunization and cholera, in the first phase of an emergency. To ensure medical consultations, treatment, referral and follow up follow Save the Children/World Health Organization/Ministry of Health diagnosis and treatment guidelines.
- Review and facilitate all referrals of patients following agreed referral protocols and ensure all referrals are documented and reported and where possible followed up.
- To support and oversee basic emergency obstetric and neonatal care ensuring sufficient capacity to meet Minimal Initial Service Package either through direct service delivery or referral pathway.
- Ensure systems in place to strictly maintain patient confidentiality
- Ensure patients records and clinic registers are completed according to both Save the Children and Ministry of Public Health requirements. Ensure use of established reporting formats for data collection, analysis and report on daily & weekly activities to the Team Leader and Head of EHU.
- Ensure the delivery of health education and promotion activities in close coordination with the WASH Manager.
- To ensure and enforce system to ensure reportable disease cases are identified and ensure protocols are followed. Immediately inform the Team manager and Head of EHU if any.
- To work with medical logistics to ensure strong drug management and to support ongoing drug orders.
Program implementation, monitoring and accountability (10%)
- To monitor the performance of the EHU through regular meetings review of HIS and project reporting systems and direct monitoring visits. Ensure accountability activities as per protocol and beneficiary feedback.
- To contribute to donor proposals, reports
Clinical Governance (20%)
- To supervise the clinical team and teams, to ensure the maximum use of their skills and their full and effective participation in project site and to monitor the quality of care in the clinic.
- Oversee the recruitment of clinical staff with HR and ensure their clinical orientation and training.
- Ensure all consultations with patients are in a dignified and appropriate manner in keeping with the standards and principles set out by Save the Children.
- Identify ongoing training needs and capacity gaps of the medical teams, provide relevant training and associate with partner organizations to improve medical performance
- To ensure staff health requirements of teams are met through the support of the country programme or head office.
- To ensure appropriate representation with the Save the Children country team, Ministry of Public Health and health cluster to ensure appropriate integration, exit strategy and to advise on the need for continual technical support.
- Comply with Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child protection, code of conduct, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures.
- Any other tasks as assigned by the Team Leader and Head of EHU.
Required Background and Experience, Skills and Behaviors
Essential
- Medical Doctor/ Nurse or Public Health experience.
- Strong experience of Health management in public health humanitarian settings including previous first phase emergency response experience.
- Experience in primary health care, Acute Water Diarrheal management and immunization.
- Experience in working in treatment centres/units particularly Cholera Treatment centres, Ebola/ haemorrhagic fever and/or other infectious diseases.
- Management experience supervising medical teams
- Experience of and commitment to working through systems of community participation and accountability
- Demonstrated monitoring and evaluation skills
- Ability to work both in an advisory and a hands on implementation capacity
- Proven capacity to supervise, train and coach staff.
- Experience of representation and ability to represent Save the Children effectively in external forums.
- Experience of preparing successful funding proposals for donors
- Excellent communication skills and ability to write clear and well-argued reports
- Politically and culturally sensitive with qualities of patience, tact and diplomacy
- A high level of written and spoken English
- The capacity and willingness to be extremely flexible and accommodating in difficult and sometimes insecure working circumstances.
- Commitment to the aims and principles of Save the Children. In particular, a good understanding of the Save the Children’s mandate and child focus and an ability to ensure this continues to underpin our support
Desirable
- Strong knowledge of Save the Children systems and ways of working.
- Experience in paediatrics.
- Experience in obstetrics.
- Proficiency in a 2nd language such as French, Spanish or Arabic
Save the Children invests in childhood – every day, in times of crisis and for our future. In the United States and around the world, we are dedicated to ensuring every child has the best chance for success. Our pioneering programs give children a healthy start, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. Our advocacy efforts provide a voice for children who cannot speak for themselves. As the leading expert on children, we inspire and achieve lasting impact for millions of the world's most vulnerable girls and boys. By transforming children's lives now, we change the course of their future and ours.
Save the Children provides an attractive benefits package including competitive salaries, a matching retirement plan, health and welfare benefits, life insurance, an employee assistance program, generous time off and much more. We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, or gender.
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