The post offered is that of Consultant Psychiatrist in General Adult Psychiatry (Liaison). The post is based within the well established Royal Free Hospital Liaison Service at the Royal Free Hospital Pond Street London NW3 2QG. This is a new post being created.
The role of the Consultant is to be the clinical lead of the team and to ensure high, quality, patient-centered, effective, safe, and efficient care is delivered by the teams.
The Royal Free Psychiatric liaison service is a well-established service with a multi-disciplinary team. The post-holder will have the opportunity to work in a senior medical position in different multi-disciplinary clinical settings on hospital wards. The main aspect of the post will entail assessment of patients on acute medical inpatient wards as well as occasionally patients in A&E/AAU Department when required. The post-holder will provide supervision and support to junior doctors within the team and other team members as required.
The successful candidate will work alongside a medical team consisting of three consultants, and junior doctors. The post-holder will be allocated referrals according to their complexity and will attend multi-disciplinary team meetings and daily handover meetings with the medical team as required.
The post-holder will be required to hold section 12(2) approval and to engage in mental health act assessments on the medical wards and occasionally in the A&E / AAU setting as required.
An administrator provides administrative support to the team. There is office space for the team based at the Royal Free Hospital.
The post-holder will also be expected to take part in relevant supervisory, teaching, audit and administrative activities.
This is a new post being created following amalgamation of sessions dropped by another consultant and sessions previously connected to a staff grade post.
North London Foundation Trust was inaugurated on 1st November 2024 following the formal merger of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey NHS Trust and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust following over 2 years of partnership working.
Our four Strategic Aims for the Partnership over the next five years are that:
• We provide consistently high-quality care, closer to home
• With our partners in North London and each Borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
• We create great places to work, providing staff with a supportive environment to deliver outstanding care
• We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, Quality Improvement and technology
The post-holder will provide 8 sessions of input to the RFH team.
The post-holder will mainly be involved in assessing hospital ward referrals but may also occasionally be involved in triage decisions when necessary and may also be required to assess A&E/AAU referrals who are admitted to ambulatory care in A&E and not deemed suitable for transfer to MHCAS.
They will assess new ward referrals and contribute to twice daily board rounds and handover meetings with the other medical staff.
Operational accountability will be to the Hospital Division Clinical Director/Associate Clinical Director and professional accountability to the Trust Medical Director. Annual leave and study leave are approved by the CD/ACD. Yearly appraisal will be undertaken with a consultant appointed by the Trust.
The successful candidate will be able to take advantage of internal training and academic opportunities.
The post holder will be required to participate in professional development, staff support, appraisal and supervision and will be allocated 2.5 PA (pro rata) supporting professional activity time (SPA) to pursue this.
The postholder will work closely with the other Consultants in the RFH liaison and MHCAS team and the Hospital Division Clinical Director/Associate Clinical Director, service director, service manager and team manager to provide strategic clinical leadership to the multi-professional group and contribute to strategic direction of the unit and development of this care pathway.
The post-holder will assist the liaison team in providing day to day clinical. This will include daily assessment of ward referrals at RFH; occasional liaising with emergency department liaison teams/medical staff; providing brief clinical reports and handover information to inpatient ward staff prior to transfer of patients subsequently detained under the mental health act and providing clinical guidance to other team members as and when required. The post-holder will participate in daily team supervision/clinical handover de-briefing sessions.
The post holder will work in an integrated way with the rest of the RFH liaison and MHCAS team.
The Post-holder and the team are also expected to forge close links with the new MHCAS service and with other Liaison Consultants in the Trust based at the Whittington, University College Hospital and Royal Free Hospital Trusts as well as in neighbouring boroughs (Islington, Haringey and Hackney). They will also liaise regularly with the Trust’s 3 crisis teams and in particular with the Crisis single point of access (C-SPA) team who provide gatekeeping assessments for patients who are detained/require admission to hospital and will help facilitate community support plan (when relevant) for patients who are in crisis but are not ultimately detainable under the Mental Health Act. The latter will be particularly important in ensuring the effective follow-up care and seamless transfer of patients who may require the organization of follow-up care if subsequently not detained under the mental health act. They will also work closely with the AMHP Duty team.
This advert closes on Friday 21 Feb 2025