The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the most successful teaching NHS Trusts in the country. We have one of the highest number of specialist services of hospitals in the UK. With around 15,000 staff, the Newcastle Hospitals is one of the region’s major employers. We have a long-standing reputation for high quality clinical care with our staff’s commitment to excellence reflected in our consistent performance at the highest level. We are committed to being an “employer of choice” offering our staff superb benefits, looking after their wellbeing, and providing access to high-quality education, training, career progression and support which enables them to provide “Healthcare at its best with people at our heart”.

The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is a world class health care provider, and one of the most successful teaching NHS trusts in the country. A tertiary centre, it offers the second highest number of specialist services than any other group of hospitals in the UK, with more than 1.72 million patient contacts each year, delivering innovative, high quality services locally, regionally, nationally and internationally and has been twice rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC.

We are the largest Trust in the country - and one of only five NHS organisations - to receive this accolade twice, which reaffirms our position as one of the UK’s top hospital trusts.

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity and recognise the benefit in providing an inclusive environment. We value and respect the diversity of our employees and aim to recruit a workforce which reflects the communities we serve, and is equipped to deliver the best service to our patients. We welcome all applications irrespective of people’s race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, age, gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity and in particular those from under represented groups.

Applications are invited from enthusiastic and highly motivated Specialist Biomedical Scientists to work within Cellular Pathology, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The department provides Histopathology, Cytopathology and Mortuary services housed within a purpose-built facility in a prime city-centre location. The laboratory is one of the largest services in the country and handles around 80,000 histology requests per annum. We receive a broad range of specimens from within the Trust, General Practitioners and as a specialist referral centre handle cases regionally, nationally and from overseas.

Histopathology is divided into a number of sections encompassing Specimen Reception, Slide Production, Immunohistochemistry (IHC), Muscle & Nerve, Electron Microscopy, Neuropathology, Mohs and research facility ‘NovoPath’. There is a workforce of 120 non-medical staff and 35 Consultant Histopathologists who work in specialist reporting teams. We have established Advanced Practitioner roles undertaking specimen dissection with some undertaking RCPath reporting qualifications for BMSs. Training opportunities are available across all staff grades and continue to develop in accordance with the professional vision of enhanced roles for Biomedical Scientists who thrive on providing a high quality service in a well-equipped and modern working environment.

The two successful applicants will be initially joining highly enthusiastic and engaged teams in Slide Production and IHC, committed to team working and personal development, dedicated to the subject of histology and in quality improvement.

As we are a large referral centre, the Slide Production team processes a large range tissue types providing good variety in work, including Special stains, support to the PM service and Northern England Haematological Oncology Diagnostic Service (NEHODS).

The Immunohistochemistry service utilises Roche Benchmark autostainers to produce around 120,000 IHC slides per year, alongside in-situ hybridisation and immunofluorescence techniques. The post provides the opportunity to be involved in specialised regional referral services that include breast and gastric HER2 screening, lung mutation testing and mis-match repair testing in various tissue types. The lab also provide IHC services to NEHODS. More recently the IHC section has been working closely with the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Genetics service to prepare local and regional tissue samples for downstream molecular testing within the NEY GLH.

Applicants must be able to demonstrate specialist knowledge of Cellular Pathology, and have technical skills in core histology and immunohistochemistry. Candidates should have excellent written and verbal communication skills and be able to work on their own as well as part of a team.

It is an essential requirement that all candidates for this post are Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) registered and hold the Specialist Diploma in Cellular Pathology (or equivalent qualification) or have significant experience of working at specialist level.

The laboratory is open Monday – Friday, 7am – 6pm, with some rotation to cover a Saturday morning, flexibility is encouraged to support the staff and the service. As a major Transplant Centre, we also provide an out of hours on-call service which is currently voluntary.

Full Time 37 hours 30 minutes/week

Important note on completion of reference section of Application Form

All references from current and previous employers will be sought and must cover a minimum of 3 years employment. Therefore, when completing the reference section of your application form, please give the address, telephone number and work email address of each of your current/previous line managers that cover 3 years employment. Failure to complete this section may result in your application not being processed.

After applying via NHS Jobs, your submitted application will be imported into our preferred Third party recruitment system. All subsequent information regarding your application will be generated from apps.trac.jobs. You will not be able to track the progress of your application or receive messages through the NHS Jobs website, and furthermore, that as an employer, we will not be able to respond to any e-mails sent to us via the NHS Jobs website. By applying for this post you are agreeing to The Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust transferring the information contained in this application to its preferred applicant management system. If you are offered a job information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

Please note it is a requirement of The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust that all successful candidates who require a DBS for the post they have been offered pay for their DBS certificate. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first month’s pay.

Candidates who are shortlisted for interview will be contacted by e-mail. You should check your SPAM folders as well as your inbox. If you have not been contacted within 4 weeks of the closing date you should assume your application has been unsuccessful.