Consultant Psychiatrist in MHSOP Community

Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust; Seaham; On-site; GBP 78,000 - 105,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading healthcare provider in the UK is seeking a full-time Consultant Psychiatrist to offer clinical leadership within a community mental health team in Seaham. The role involves assessing and delivering mental health services to older adults, supervising specialty doctors, and collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team. Candidates must have relevant medical qualifications and significant experience in psychiatric care for older people.

Qualifications

• Experience in leading community mental health teams.
• Proven track record in psychiatric care for older adults.
• Ability to work collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary team.

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical and medical leadership to the community team.
• Conduct psychiatric assessments and reviews of patients.
• Supervise and support specialty doctors within the team.

Skills

Clinical leadership

Psychiatric assessments

Team collaboration

Patient care

Education

MBBS or equivalent medical qualification

Royal College of Psychiatrists membership

Job description

This is a full-time (1.0 WTE) Consultant Psychiatrist post providing clinical and medical leadership to the Community Mental Health Services for Older Peoples team in Easington, County Durham. The post-holder will work as part of the community team, which is based in Seaham.

In 2024, the posts were reconfigured to reflect demographic changes within the catchment area and provide an equivalent level of psychiatrist staff input to teams across the locality. This is a replacement post following retirement of the previous postholder.

This post includes scheduled sessions in the Easington CMHT; no other fixed commitments with any other teams or services are included. We would, however, be keen to hear from applicants with any special interests and these would be considered as part of the job planning process, by mutual agreement.

The post holder will provide consultant psychiatric input to a population of 20,647 people over 65 years in the Easington area, alongside a specialty doctor.

The team provides mental health services to older people with mental health problems and frailty-related complexities. We also accept referrals for young onset dementia patients. Each team has administrative support and co‑located social workers. The teams use the Care Programme Approach (CPA) to ensure regular reviews and risk assessments are completed, with supervision in place in accordance with trust policy. The Clinical PAs are 7.5 PA across the week, based at the Seaham team base and this is likely to include a combination of clinics at the team base, and home visits across the catchment area. The post-holder will be responsible for the delivery of mental health services to the population of older people of approximately 20,000.

This post provides consultant leadership to the community teams, working closely with other consultant colleagues working in the Durham and Darlington CMHTs, and the consultants and teams at our inpatient MHSOP services. The post holder will provide clinical supervision to the teams specialty doctor.

The Consultant is an integral member of enthusiastic and well managed multi-disciplinary team.

There will be a requirement to undertake some home visits. It is expected that the post holder will carry a small personal caseload (historically, around 10 patients or fewer) with the team members being care coordinator for most patients, reviewing that care with the consultant in line with new ways of working.

The weekly workload for the consultant will consist of around 1-2 new patient assessments with flexibility to respond to urgent referrals, face to face support to the team in scheduled meetings and ad‑hoc, around 10-12 face to face reviews of community patients either at their home or in clinic with actual numbers dependant on the complexity of each review.

We are one of the largest specialist mental health and learning disabilities trusts in the country, with an annual income of £320m and a workforce of some 6,700 staff operating from around 100 sites in Durham, Teesside, North Yorkshire and York and Selby. We provide a range inpatient and community services to 2m 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 TEVW Charter for the Medical Workforce. (Please see attached Supporting Document).