Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry
St John’s Hospital, Livingston
Reference: 208566
NHS Lothian is committed to encouraging equality and diversity among our workforce and eliminating unlawful discrimination. The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best.
To this end, NHS Lothian welcomes applications from all sections of society.
We will fully support disabled candidates, and candidates with long-term conditions or who are neurodivergent by making reasonable adjustments to our recruitment policy and practices.
Applicants must have full GMC Registration, a license to practise and eligible for inclusion in the GMC Specialist Register. Those trained in the UK should have evidence of higher specialist training leading to CCT or be within 6 months of confirmed entry from the date of interview. Portfolio Pathway (formerly known as CESR - Certificate of Eligibility for Specialist Registration) route doctors are only eligible to apply for a substantive consultant post once it has been awarded. Non-UK applicants must demonstrate equivalent training.
Applications are welcome for the above Permanent, part time (32 hours per week) post based in St John’s Hospital, Livingston.
You will be expected to undertake the duties of an Old Age Consultant Psychiatrist, caring for patients from a GP catchment area in clinic and on an assessment ward. You will also be responsible for contributing to a memory clinic, along with a dedicated ANP.
The post is an 8 session post. This is a chance to be part of a well-established team at a time of positive development. 7 sessions will be catchment area work, covering both inpatients, outpatients and liaising with the community team and there is 1 SPA session.
There will also be the possibility of revising the clinical work covered depending on service need and the interests and skills of the successful applicant.
The post-holder will deliver care and promote a multidisciplinary and multiagency approach to a catchment area of approx 9700 (figures from GP lists).
The postholder will be supported by a multi-disciplinary team including junior medical staff and a part-time secretary. Our community mental health team support with triaging referrals and assessing a large proportion of patients before they are allocated to consultant clinics. After the CPN assesses the patient, they may require supervision and will bring the patient back to the team meeting to discuss the presentation and explore options for medication and treatment plan. They can request consultant clinic appointments for the patients they review. The consultant clinics will also contain patients who are under annual review, or some patients who do not have a CPN involved in the case. There is also a social worker embedded into the CMHT who attends the weekly team meeting and will take referrals from any of the team.
This post holder will also be the consultant involved in the memory clinic. Patients to be seen in this clinic are assessed comprehensively by the CPNs, using a structured assessment. The assessments are checked by all of the consultants in this department (particularly checking that all bloods are done before being seen in clinic). This post holder will have 2 memory clinics plus an admin session to see patients for diagnosis and treatment planning. We have on site access to ECG, CT, MRI, SALT and neuropsychology for support with the diagnosis. We can refer for SPECT and DAT scans in other Lothian sites. There is also the cognitive disorder clinic in Edinburgh of complex presentations. There is an ANP who specialises in dementia diagnosis and treatment who support all the memory clinics and will also see patients who require a home visit for diagnosis.
The in-patient ward is supported by an FY2, a core psychiatry trainee, a higher psychiatry trainee, RMNs, OT and physiotherapist. There is one old age psychiatry assessment ward in the hospital that cares for male and female patients, with both functional and organic mental illness. There are 12 beds available.
More detailed departmental and specialty information can be found in the job description available via email address / link below.
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