Specialty Doctor in Psychiatry - Older Adults Community TeamNHS
Job summary
Durham & Tees Valley Mental Health Services for Older People (MHSOP) provides a comprehensive mental health service to older people living in the region and works in partnership with acute and community health services provided by 3 acute Trusts.
The service serves an over-65 population of over 250,000. The service provides assessment and treatment of organic and functional mental illness for the population over 65 years old, although younger patients who are appropriate for the service are also accepted.
Durham & Tees Valley MHSOP is comprised of 9 community mental health teams, 3 inpatient wards for patients with functional illnesses and 3 inpatient wards for patients requiring organic assessment and treatment. The service also provides dedicated MHSOP Crisis, Intensive Community Liaison and Care Home Liaison teams; medical input for the latter is provided by the community consultants.
This post is for the Durham and Sedgefield North Community Mental Health Team based at The Bowes Lyon Unit, Lanchester Road Hospital, Durham. The team has a caseload of 1070 and receives approximately 1200 referrals a year.
Main duties of the job
The Specialty Doctor will attend multi-disciplinary huddles each morning providing clinical leadership and support, complete clinic appointments as required for functional and organic patients including delivering diagnosis of Dementia, provide appointments, as required, in patients homes including Care Homes and carry out Mental Health Act Assessments.
The post-holder would support two consultants. The team is divided into three different cells; functional, organic and care home liaison. Most of the work consists of outpatient reviews in the organic cell including dementia diagnostic appointments. However, it is expected that the post-holder will support all three cells. This will also involve conducting the occasional initial assessment. Due to the nature of our patients, there will also be the expectation to complete some home visits. The weekly workload for the post holder will consist of around 1 new patient assessment, with flexibility to respond to urgent referrals, face to face support to the team in meetings and ad-hoc, around 8 - 10 face to face reviews of community patients either at their home or in clinic with actual numbers dependant on the complexity of the review. Urgent referrals may also involve completing Mental Health Act Assessments. If the post holder is not yet Section 12 approved, then support will be available to obtain this.
Job description
More detailed information about the post can be found on the job description attached to this advert.
About us
We are one of the largest specialist mental health and learning disabilities trusts in the country operating from sites in Durham, Teesside, North Yorkshire and York and Selby. We provide a range inpatient and community services to people living in County Durham, the Tees Valley, Scarborough, Whitby, Ryedale, Harrogate, Hambleton and Richmondshire. We also provide additional specialist services to other parts of Northern England.
We deliver our services by working in partnership with eight local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, a wide range of voluntary organisations, as well as service users, their carers and the public.
Psychiatrists are essential contributors to our mental health teams. Service users expect and are justified to expect collaborative relationships with dedicated psychiatrists who work consistently as part of effective services. The Medical Directorate and Medical Development Team are striving to improve medical workforce recruitment and retention in a variety of ways and the cornerstone of these efforts is The TEWV Charter for the Medical Workforce. (Please see attached Supporting Document).