Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist

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Job overview

Following a planned uplift of funding through the Long Term Plan, we are delighted to be able to offer an additional substantive Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist post (0.6PA) to join our expanding team covering the ‘Mid Mersey’ region (Warrington, Halton, St Helens and Knowsley). You will join a passionate and welcoming multidisciplinary team (which includes an existing 0.8PA Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist) delivering high quality, evidence based care to women and families throughout their perinatal journey.

Main duties of the job

The team has a base at Hollins Park hospital, but has satellite clinics across the Mid Mersey and the post holder will work across the Mid Mersey Region, covering the boroughs of Warrington, Halton, St Helens and Knowsley. It is likely the consultant will be predominately provide consultant input to 2 out of the 4 boroughs (the other 2 being covered by the other consultant already in post), but the ability to work flexibly across the boroughs will be required if necessary

The consultant psychiatrist is expected to carry a caseload of the most complex cases. The majority of these will be care co-ordinated or have another team member involved delivering perinatal specific interventions. They will also be available to provide consultation, advice and assessments to other team members and secondary community mental health services, although they are not required to act as care co-ordinator. They will be required to undertake new assessments for complex patients, provide medication and diagnostic assessments, lead CPA reviews and birth planning appointments, provide crisis and urgent reviews and lead discharges planning appointments for complex patients.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region (Halton, Warrington, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton and St Helens) and is also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

While primarily responsible for delivering a quality clinical service, the consultant psychiatrist is also expected to be actively involved in the development of the team and broader service, together with the rest of the leadership team. We have an active, ambitious and innovative perinatal service Quality Improvement programme, overseen by the Clinical Development Oversight Group, which consists of the service clinical leads and those clinicians involved in specific QI projects.

The service has an ambitious training plan, and the consultant will be able to access regular ‘in house’ training, and will also be expected to deliver training across the trust and to external agencies.

There is no inpatient commitment with this post and there is no Mother and Baby Unit located within the service, but we have close links with our local regional units in Wythenshawe and Chorley.

The Mid Mersey division has borough CMHTs (these are called Recovery teams), an EIP service, CAMHs, psychiatric liaison services at both acute hospitals (Warrington and Whiston), Crisis teams and older persons mental health teams. There are acute inpatient units in each of the boroughs. The local maternity units are at Whiston Hospital and Warrington.

The consultant will join a supportive community of established and experienced local and regional perinatal psychiatrists, in addition to the network of psychiatrists of all disciplines within Merseycare.

When the post holder is on leave cover is provided by the other medics on the days they work and by generic adult mental health team consultant relevant to the geographical patch at other times, with expert perinatal advice available from perinatal consultants in other teams.

The team consists of:

0.8 WTE consultant perinatal psychiatrist

0.4 WTW consultant perinatal psychiatrist (Currently a consultant psychiatrist is employed on a 1 year fixed term contract, pending this substantive post)

0.9WTE specialty doctor

1 WTE Band 7 Clinical Team Manager

1 WTE Band 7 Clinical Lead

0.8 WTE Band 8a Advanced Clinical Pharmacist

6 WTE Band 6 Mental Health Practitioners in post and currently recruiting to 9.5 WTE

1.6 WTE Band 6 Occupational Therapists

3.4 WTE Band 8a/8b Clinical Psychologists

2 WTE Band 4 Family Support Workers

1 WTE Band 4 Assistant Practitioner

2 WTE Band 4 Assistant Psychologists

1.2 WTE Band 3 Peer Support Workers

1 WTE Band 7 Systemic Family Practitioner

2 WTE Band 2/3 Administrator

1.6 WTE Band 4 Medical Secretary

The team has a senior leadership team consisting of the consultants, clinical lead, lead psychologist and team manager, and meets on a weekly basis.

Please see job description for further details.

Person specification

Qualifications

• MB BS or equivalent medical qualification
• Qualification or higher degree in medical education, clinical research or management
• Additional clinical qualifications

Transport

• Holds and will use valid UK driving licence OR provides evidence of proposed alternative.
• Fully registered with the GMC with a licence to practise at the time of appointment
• Included on the GMC Specialist Register OR within six months.
• Approved clinician status OR able to achieve within 3 months of appointment
• Approved under S12 OR able to achieve with 3 months of appointment
• In good standing with GMC with respect to warning and conditions on practice

Clinical Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• Excellent knowledge in specialty of General Adult Psychiatry and experience of Perinatal Psychiatry
• Excellent clinical skills using bio-psycho-social perspective and wide medical knowledge
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English
• Able to manage clinical complexity and uncertainty
• Makes decisions based on evidence and experience including the contribution of others
• Able to meet duties under MHA and MCA
• Wide range of specialist and sub-specialist experience relevant to post within NHS or comparable service

Academic Skills & Lifelong Learning

• Able to deliver undergraduate or postgraduate teaching and training
• Ability to work Constructively and to lead a multidisciplinary team
• Participated in continuous professional development
• Participated in research or service evaluation
• Able to use and appraise clinical evidence
• Has actively participated in clinical audit
• Able to plan and deliver undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and training relevant to this post
• Reflected on purpose of CPD undertaken
• Experienced in clinical research and / or service evaluation
• Evidence of achievement in education, research, audit and service improvement: awards, prizes, presentations and publications
• Has led clinical audits leading to service change

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We celebrate diversity and promote equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from BAME, disabled and LGBT people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust’s guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs. Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please contact the recruitment team to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email [email protected]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team is able to prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.