Prosthetist/orthotist at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

The job at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Prosthetists design, make and fit artificial limbs for people who have lost a limb through amputation or were born without one; orthotists provide braces, splints, insoles, footwear and spinal supports that support, align or correct weak or deformed limbs. Both take detailed measurements, casts and digital scans, work with technicians to manufacture the device, then fit, align and adjust it and review the patient over time. They work in specialist centres alongside surgeons, physiotherapists and rehabilitation engineers. People with limb loss including military veterans and people with vascular disease or diabetes, children with cerebral palsy and congenital conditions, and adults with arthritis, neurological conditions, sports injuries or spinal deformity.

At an acute trust such as Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, that work means an acute hospital caseload — inpatients on the wards, emergency and critical care, theatres and diagnostics, and hospital outpatient clinics, with the working day shaped by admissions, ward rounds and discharge planning. Newly qualified posts here are usually rotational: four to six months at a time in a different clinical area, which is how you find out what you want to specialise in before you commit. Across the profession as a whole, prosthetists and orthotists work in settings including NHS disablement services centres and limb-fitting centres, NHS acute trust orthotics departments, contracted independent providers, rehabilitation units and paediatric and cerebral palsy services — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust pays band 5 exactly what every other NHS employer in England pays it: £32,073 at the bottom of the band on the 2026/27 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in the South East was £39,983 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.