Consultant in Adult & Old Age Liaison Psychiatry

North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) provides NHS mental health services for the residents of the London Boroughs of Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Barking & Dagenham and Havering.

A new post been created in the Psychiatric Liaison Service in NELFT. The post is based at Queens Hospital in Romford, Essex. The post is full-time and provides 10 Programmed Activities per week – 7.5 PAs for direct clinical care and up to 2.5 PAs for supporting professional activity. There is a Senior on-call rota which is remunerated at 3%.

NELFT operates a nationally recognised model of minimising bed usage through close collaboration between the Home Treatment Team’s, Acute Wards, the Psychiatric Liaison Service, and the Crisis Hub.

The Psychiatric Liaison Service is well-established within the NELFT Acute & Rehabilitation Directorate and works closely with the Acute Trust (BHRUT).

The post offers excellent CPD, and study leave arrangements as well as good research and service development opportunities.

Queens Hospital is served by excellent transport links with the local area and central London.

Staff in NELFT work within a supportive environment that strives to strike an excellent work/life balance and job satisfaction, which creates an atmosphere to provide high quality care. In addition, staff also enjoy other benefits including a car lease scheme, flexible working arrangements, Childcare Voucher scheme, the NHS Pension Scheme, and ongoing opportunities for career development.

NELFT has excellent relationships with all stakeholders, robust governance structures and excellent systems of data collection and performance monitoring. As a Foundation Trust, NELFT retains any surplus generated for investment in services.

NELFT is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and to protecting them from the risk of harm. NELFT recognizes its responsibility to ensure that safe working systems are in place for staff working with children and families and staff working with children and adults in their care.

We are looking for enthusiastic and flexible candidates who demonstrate leadership abilities and are committed to working in a multidisciplinary setting.

Applicants should be on the Specialist Register or be within six months of obtaining their CCT. The candidate should be suitably qualified, including eligibility for Section 12 approval and Approved Clinician status.

Main responsibilities:
1. To be responsible for organising and prioritising own and others workload in the day-to-day allocation of work.
2. To deputise when required in the team manager’s absence and delegate appropriately to other medical staff.
3. To have organisational knowledge relating to Trust protocols and procedures and adhere to them.
4. To be responsible for providing accurate records of information required by the Trust for audit purposes.
5. To ensure effective risk management at team level by accident/incident reporting, assessing, and controlling risk and ensuring residual risks are added to the Trust’s risk register.

Clinical Skills:
1. To act as an autonomous, registered practitioner who is legally and professionally accountable for own unsupervised actions guided by the professional code of conduct and Trust guidelines and protocols.
2. The post holder will have full registration with a licence to practice on the General Medical Council (GMC).
1. The post holder will preferably be dually certified (on the Specialist Register) for General Adult and Old Age psychiatry or in one specialty with adequate training and experience ( > 1 year recent experience) in the specialty for which they are not on the Specialist Register. A subspecialty endorsement in Liaison Psychiatry is preferred or > 1 year experience in Liaison Psychiatry.
2. The post holder will have clinical responsibility for the psychiatric care of patients of working and older age attending Queen’s Hospital.
3. Together with the multi-disciplinary Liaison staff as well as BHR teams, the consultant will lead in the assessment and treatment of patients in the Emergency Department and on the wards. There is no individual caseload carried and the referrals are triaged for assessment by the Clinical Lead each day.
4. Indicative workload figures: This is a new additional post. There are currently approximately 200 referrals a month for the team for all ages. At any one point there will be a case load of approximately 20 older adults and 5 Adults held by the team. There will be two additional consultant colleagues on site so the existing work load will be divided. It is expected that the post holder would see on average between one and three patients a day and provide supervision to other team members with other cases.
5. Ensuring that clinical care provided to the service users is of a high quality and is provided within the Trust’s policy framework.
6. The post holder will undertake the necessary clinical administrative duties associated with providing excellent patient care.
7. The post holder will be an active member of the multidisciplinary team, and therefore attend multidisciplinary team meetings business meetings.
8. Treatment and management will focus on the recovery model, and the aim for each patient would be to return to an appropriate community setting as soon as possible.
9. The post holder will support the liaison team at King George Hospital as necessary, including providing cross cover arrangements as required.
10. The post holder will work closely with the Acute Crisis Assessment Team (ACAT), the Home Treatment Teams, Access, Assessment & Brief Intervention Teams, Older Persons CMHT’s, as well as other services such as memory services and psychological services etc.
1. The post holder will also work closely with BHR services, London Ambulance Service and the Police.
2. The post holder will ensure the Liaison service conducts parallel assessments of patients(with medical and surgical teams), meets its targets of assessing patients within:

1 hour of referral from ED

4 hours of referral from the Medical Admission/Receiving Units

24 hours of referral from the wards
1. The post holder would also support BHR in meeting their Emergency Department targets.
1. The post holder will assume the role of Approved Clinician for patients detained under the MHA to acute BHR wards, attending Tribunal and Managers’ hearings as well as writing reports for these hearings.
2. The post holder will support the clinical management of patients transferred on section 17 leave from NELFT wards and take on AC responsibilities when transfer of that role has been agreed.
3. In keeping with the New Ways of Working for Consultant Psychiatrists’ agenda, consultant staff are encouraged to delegate responsibilities for patient care, where appropriate.
4. The post-holder may expect to work with a multi-ethnic population with high levels of morbidity.